- Gas price cap subject to conditions
- Energy Charter: many open questions before today’s vote
- Commission uses technocrat language
- Habeck wants to subsidize construction of wind turbines or electrolyzers
- TTC: what EU and USA want to agree on in concrete terms
- European Parliament demands proof from Hungary
- Supercomputer LEONARDO starts
- Agricultural support: Commission approves CAP strategic plan
- Eon CEO becomes interim president of Eurelectric
- Eurogroup presidency: Donohoe has good chances for second mandate
- Forestry strategy: Agriculture and Fisheries Council criticizes fragmentation of policy areas
- Heads: Christiane Barth – in Brussels for municipal utilities
The Commission presented the draft law on the gas price cap after all. Several member states are said to have threatened to block the next emergency regulation on the energy crisis if a draft is not submitted to energy ministers before their meeting on Thursday. But the Commission wants to impose another condition: If the market correction mechanism is indeed activated, it wants to extend the gas savings target beyond March 2023. As recently as Friday, however, the Permanent Representatives wanted to remove all conditions for the price cap, as Manuel Berkel learned.
The Energy Charter Conference is taking place in Mongolia today. It is unlikely that a reform of the International Investment Treaties will take place there. A good part of the governments in the EU – such as Germany, France and the Netherlands – as well as climate activists reject it. As a result, the EU lacks the mandate to approve this reform, as Charlotte Wirth reports. The EU Commission’s last resort is a classic example of when nothing really works: It tries to postpone the vote.
A political scientist from Berlin has treated himself to a literary treat of a special kind. Christian Rauh from the Social Science Research Center Berlin used algorithms to examine around 45,000 press releases from the Commission from 1985 to 2020 that were available in English. His conclusion: The Commission has a “considerable deficit” in communication, reports Markus Grabitz. The language is very complex, peppered with special terms, and the Commission prefers a nominal style.
Matthias Wulff
Feature
Gas price cap subject to conditions
With the emergency regulation, the Commission wants to limit extremely high gas prices for one year, as was the case last summer. Europe.Table had already reported on the key points of the market correction mechanism. A concrete value for the price cap has not been decided yet and, therefore, not included in the bill. However, the Commission has made a number of changes to the key points.
In the summer, the member states agreed to reduce gas consumption by 15 percent by March 2023. A new decision could make this target mandatory. With the current draft, the Commission now wants to prevent EU member states from consuming more gas despite the politically set price brake. If the gas price cap is activated, the Commission should therefore submit another legislative proposal to extend the gas savings target beyond March, according to the explanatory memorandum.
Within two weeks of activating the price cap, member states are also expected to outline to the Commission what measures they have already taken to ensure that gas and electricity consumption do not increase and that the recently adopted gas and electricity savings targets are met.
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