The European Fee blindsided member nation governments with 5 concepts for tackling the vitality emergency on Wednesday, and response by member international locations was break up, six diplomats advised POLITICO.
That is doubtless to provide Fee President Ursula Von der Leyen some room for maneuver forward of subsequent week’s State of the European Union speech, which is anticipated to push for an EU-wide effort to get pure fuel and electrical energy costs underneath management. EU vitality ministers will focus on vitality costs throughout an emergency summit Friday.
Von der Leyen proposed 5 “instant” strikes to assist tame Europe’s vitality emergency: setting a worth cap on Russian fuel; obligatory measures to cut back electrical energy demand; a cap on revenues for corporations producing electrical energy from low-cost sources (known as inframarginal producers) with these “surprising earnings” going to assist shoppers; a solidarity tax on fossil gas corporations making huge earnings; and facilitating help for ailing utility corporations.
Two measures stood out as being supported by each the Fee and EU international locations, stated a number of diplomats following a gathering of EU ambassadors.
The primary is offering credit score to assist utilities publish the sky-high collateral money wanted to commerce on vitality exchanges within the present excessive worth setting.
The second is taxing the earnings of inframarginal producers — although EU ambassadors needed assurances that the income from such taxes would keep in the best nation. Ironing out the main points shall be necessary, as energy crops which can be paid to activate or off as wanted to steadiness the grid usually achieve this on the request of utilities over a nationwide border.
Probably the most controversial subject is the Russian worth cap — largely aimed toward punishing the Kremlin financially for the battle in Ukraine — with capitals having “very contradictory views,” one EU diplomat stated.
Germany has stated it’s “skeptical” concerning the thought. Hungary, Russia’s closest EU ally, is towards it, as is Slovakia and a minimum of two different international locations, diplomats stated.
Others, together with Poland and Italy, need the Fee to go additional and cap the worth of all fuel imported into the EU. Von der Leyen stated this was one thing the Fee was “taking a look at” — however Brussels has broadly been towards the concept in its assessments thus far, which might be far more advanced than singling out Russian fuel.
Whereas Norway, now the bloc’s largest pure fuel provider, has stated it could be open to a cap, there are extra questions concerning the U.S., the place Democrats face a good midterm election in November.
Hungary additionally desires any vitality bundle to be unanimously agreed, somewhat than by emergency process with majority voting, because the Fee desires, a diplomat stated.
Poland’s name to reform the Emissions Buying and selling System, which it blames for jacking up vitality costs, was a non-starter for Luxembourg, Eire, Germany, Finland and Sweden, stated a senior diplomat.
The thought of reducing electrical energy demand is in style, however whereas von der Leyen’s proposal requires reductions to be obligatory, international locations together with Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece and Poland need such measures to be voluntary.
The Fee did not tackle the difficulty of decoupling fuel and electrical energy costs, though that is one thing a number of international locations need to occur.
International locations have been largely blindsided by von der Leyen racing forward of the calendar and publicly saying the proposals, discovering out it will occur simply forward of the occasion, diplomats stated. The expectation was that Friday’s summit could be extra of a sounding board for EU ministers to chew over the numerous concepts for coping with the emergency.
EU ambassadors have been miffed that von der Leyen spoke on the similar time that nationwide specialists have been discussing technical particulars forward of Friday’s summit. “It was actually not fortunate to have it similtaneously the member states discussing the way in which ahead,” an EU diplomat stated.
However regardless of the grumbling, capitals broadly agreed that von der Leyen was proper to take management of the talk.
This text is a part of POLITICO Professional
The one-stop-shop answer for coverage professionals fusing the depth of POLITICO journalism with the ability of know-how
Unique, breaking scoops and insights
Personalized coverage intelligence platform
A high-level public affairs community
if ( document.referrer.indexOf( document.domain ) < 0 ) {
pl_facebook_pixel_args.referrer = document.referrer;
}
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq( 'consent', 'revoke' );
fbq( 'init', "394368290733607" );
fbq( 'track', 'PageView', pl_facebook_pixel_args );
if ( typeof window.__tcfapi !== 'undefined' ) {
window.__tcfapi( 'addEventListener', 2, function( tcData, listenerSuccess ) {
if ( listenerSuccess ) {
if ( tcData.eventStatus === 'useractioncomplete' || tcData.eventStatus === 'tcloaded' ) {
__tcfapi( 'getCustomVendorConsents', 2, function( vendorConsents, success ) {
if ( ! vendorConsents.hasOwnProperty( 'consentedPurposes' ) ) {
return;
}
const consents = vendorConsents.consentedPurposes.filter(
function( vendorConsents ) {
return 'Create a personalised ads profile' === vendorConsents.name;
}
);
if ( consents.length === 1 ) {
fbq( 'consent', 'grant' );
}
} );
}
}
});
}
