Athens to propose EU-wide gas price cap
Greece will submit a technical proposal for a cap on natural gas prices to the European Commission later this week following consultations with other European countries, Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas said on Monday.
EU countries’ energy ministers adopted a fresh set of policies on Friday to attempt to tame high energy costs, including windfall profit taxes on energy firms.
However, states are divided over what to do next – with many calling for an EU-wide cap on gas prices, but others, including Europe’s economic powerhouse Germany, opposed.
Energy ministers from Greece, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Poland will discuss the Greek proposal in a conference call this week, Skrekas told state ERT television, without elaborating on the proposal.
“I hope that with this proposal, we will finally manage to win the necessary majority so that there is a cap on the natural gas price in Europe,” he said.
In an article published by Bloomberg earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged Europe to take back control of its gas market, with a cap set high enough to act as a circuit breaker while allowing market activity at reasonable levels to continue.
“A cap should be an upward limit on how high prices can go, not an artificially low number that will destabilize markets,” Mitsotakis was quoted as saying in the article. [Reuters]
