Brussels, 29/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - European Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced on Friday 29 May that, at the forthcoming European Council on 18-19 June, he would raise the issue of the difficulty Ukraine faced in paying Russia for its gas and the possibility of the EU providing financial assistance to enable it to do so. Barroso told press in Brussels that he had “promised” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a telephone call on Friday that he would “raise the matter with heads of state and government in June to see what is possible”. In addition, Putin sent Barroso a letter this week in which he suggests that the EU help Ukraine pay for its gas, or Europe might face further disruption to its supply after the “gas crisis” of January this year. Putin proposed that the EU set up an “international pool” involving financial institutions such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) to finance the purchase of Russian gas by Ukraine. Were the EU to be prepared to grant money to Ukraine, Russia would consider becoming part of the pool, Putin said. For the moment the initiative is exclusively Russian, Ukraine not having asked anything of the EU, a Commission spokesman said on Friday. June's European Council will then consider the issue, but it will probably be “difficult, if not impossible” to follow up on the Russian request given the current state of the EU budget, Barroso said. The issue will be discussed on 18 June, just before the summit, by the European Gas Coordination Group, a forum of gas experts from all 27 EU member states, the Commission spokesman said. Representatives of Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz and Russian gas company Gazprom have also been invited to the meeting.
In the meantime, Italy says it supports the EU's picking up some of Ukraine's gas bill. “Russia says that it cannot find the $5 billion needed to fill Ukraine's depots, so it turned towards Europe, asking it to split the expense. At the next European Council, I will raise this request from the Russian Federation so that Europe can take care of a problem that concerns many European states,” announced Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. (H.B./transl.rt)