The 27 Heads of State or Government of the European Union Member States will meet in the European Council on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 October with the difficult task of agreeing on guidelines intended to mitigate the impact of soaring energy prices in Europe in the short term, and to strengthen the EU’s resilience to such fluctuations in the future, while also ensuring that the ‘Fit for 55’ package remains high on the political agenda.
According to our information, the discussion is likely to be difficult since the issue is linked to specific energy details as well as the economic and geopolitical characteristics of the Member States.
“We are faced with very different situations and approaches regarding one Member State and another”, said a European diplomat on Wednesday.
This European Council should therefore mean that the EU27 will address various complex and divisive issues such as the role of nuclear energy and fossil gas (and their potential inclusion in the EU taxonomy), the EU’s dependence for energy on Russia, and the adoption of the ‘Fit for 55’ package.
As another EU diplomat explained to us, this is a discussion “which is intended to mandate the EU Council for the coming months”. An extraordinary meeting of the Energy Ministers of Member States specifically to discuss this subject is already scheduled for 26 October.
It is therefore to be expected that the European Council conclusions will remain rather broad on this point, as suggested by a draft version of them. The draft conclusions, dated 18 October, call on the Member States and the Commission “to urgently make the best use” of the “toolbox” proposed by the Commission on 13 October (see EUROPE 12811/1) “to provide short-term relief to the most vulnerable consumers and to support European companies”.
The draft text also calls on the Commission and the EU Council “to consider medium and long-term measures that would ensure energy at a price that is affordable for households and companies, increase the resilience of the EU’s energy system, provide security of supply and support the transition to climate neutrality”.
At this stage, therefore, the document does not mention any specific measures, while several Member States have already put forward proposals such as the creation of a strategic reserve for fossil gas and the joint purchase of gas (Spain), the reform of the European energy market in order to decouple electricity prices from those of gas (France) and the postponement of some of the proposals of the ‘Fit for 55’ package (Poland – see EUROPE 12815/6).
It must be noted that other Member States – in particular Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Portugal and the Netherlands – seem to be reluctant to intervene in the European energy market (see EUROPE 12806/6).
According to a European diplomat, a majority of Member States would therefore be in favour of selective and temporary aid rather than trying to reform the energy market.
The European Commission, for its part, has asked the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) to carry out an assessment of how the European electricity market functions. The initial results of this analysis are expected in November.
The Polish proposal to revise or delay some of the proposals in the ‘Fit for 55’ package is not expected to enjoy broad support since the vast majority of Member States had supported the Commission’s opinion that the Green Deal is a solution to rising energy prices, not a cause of them (see EUROPE 12806/6).
See the draft conclusions dated 18 October: https://bit.ly/3B0jJVD (Original version in French by Damien Genicot with the editorial staff)