After ten hours of discussions, the leaders of the European Union Member States decided, on the night of Thursday 20-21 October, not to close any doors on energy measures (see EUROPE 13047/1) and on possible European financial instruments to be adopted as a matter of urgency to deal with the surge in energy prices caused by the Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
In the conclusions adopted, the EU27 merged the energy sector-specific paragraphs with the fiscal measures. In a masterly display of constructive ambiguity, they call on the European Commission and the Council of the EU to take “urgent” decisions on additional measures “mobilising the relevant tools at national and EU level”.
The European Council also stresses the importance of close coordination of economic and fiscal policies in order to preserve the Single Market and “common European level solutions”.
According to one source, this pooling of energy and economic measures was requested by the Italian Prime Minister. Mario Draghi, who is attending his last EU summit, is at the forefront of demands for a common fiscal capacity, along the lines of the financial instruments of solidarity set up to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. Spain, France and Portugal are also in favour.
According to the French President, Emmanuel Macron, “the mandate is very precise in its objectives (...): we call for financial solidarity”. This will allow the Commission, he added, to make proposals “in the coming weeks” on guarantee mechanisms such as SURE (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) or for Member States to use unused loans under the REPowerEU strategy (see EUROPE 13035/14).
Countries that are frugal on budgetary issues - Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden - are less enthusiastic about developing common financial instruments. But they do not express their outright rejection.
“The mandate is to look at everything possible”, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
For the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, the funds available under the Next Generation EU recovery plan, the EU budget and the REPowerEU strategy should be mobilised first. “We are willing to accept that the EU Commission (...) would come up with proposals and we will then assess those proposals”, he also said.
The text of the conclusions “keeps the options open”, summarised the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo.
For the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the agreed text highlights the determination of the EU27 “to mobilise the necessary instruments at national and EU level”.
For her part, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, outlined several options for financing the emergency energy measures, without explicitly mentioning a new specific European mechanism. She recalled that the super-profits of energy companies can be skimmed off, that the cohesion policy for the period 2014-2020 can still provide €40 billion and that the REPowerEU strategy allows for investment in climate transition.
See the conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/3QQ (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion with Damien Genicot, Léa Marchal and Camille-Cerise Gessant)