The 27 member states of the European Union will gather on Thursday for the second time in a fortnight to discuss ways to lower energy costs, but the EU is unlikely to set a gas price cap for the time being due to ongoing tensions within it.
Following an earlier agreement to reduce consumption and impose taxes on energy business windfall profits, the 27 are anticipated to support an alternative pricing benchmark for liquefied natural gas and joint gas procurement.
However, when Russia shut off gas deliveries as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, opinions on whether and how to control gas prices to combat excessive inflation and fend off a recession are still as divided as they were months ago.
While 15 nations, including France and Poland, advocate for some kind of cap, Germany and the Netherlands—largest Europe’s economy and largest gas consumer, respectively—strongly disagree.
Before the meetings on Thursday, a senior EU diplomat warned, ‘An agreement is quite doubtful… Opinions seem to be really far apart.’
In order to lessen the impact the severe energy shortage has on their economy and 450 million residents, they will also talk about emergency spending.
Some nations have requested that the union issue new joint debt to pay for that, but more frugal members argue that hundreds of billions of euros that were left over from earlier programmes should be utilised first.
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