European leaders discuss the “new roadmap” to limit the price of gas, apart from Russia

Heads of State and Government of 44 European countries meet this Thursday in Prague (Czech Republic) in the first summit of what has been called the European Political Community. The meeting will serve to discuss the approach made yesterday by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the need to establish a “new roadmap” to contain the price of gas.

In addition to the heads of State and Government of the 27, representatives of six Balkan countries (Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro), the United Kingdom, as well as the four countries of the EFTA (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) together with Ukraine and Moldova, which already have candidate status, in addition to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In addition, it is expected that the President of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelensky, will intervene in the meeting electronically.

Precisely, the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexander de Croo, has highlighted the absence of Russia and Belarus at the top, proof of what “isolated“Which are both from the rest of the continent.

Although the idea of ​​this new community came from the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and was later blessed by the rest of the 27, from the European Union they strive to emphasize that it is not a project of integration parallel to that of enlargement, but of an “intergovernmental process” in which everyone has the same weight.

To speed up the work, the 44 leaders will be divided into four working groups, two of them on peace and security and the other two on energy, climate and the economic situation. However, everything seems to indicate that the war in Ukraine and the biggest energy crisis in Europe in the last 50 years will dominate the agenda.

There is no consensus on the cap on gas

Von der Leyen yesterday proposed a “road map” with four blocks of ideas that go, first, to continue negotiating prices with “trustworthy” suppliers, such as Norway and the United States and, in parallel, to continue developing a platform for joint purchases of gas in the EU to prevent competition between countries from raising the prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Secondly, the President of the Commission also called for extend the “Iberian exception” to the entire EU that limits the contagion of the cost of gas to electricity in Spain and Portugal, while a far-reaching reform of the electricity market is being prepared.

15 States Members, including France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Slovenia, Portugal or Greece, have been pressing for weeks for the EU to impose a maximum purchase price on all gas imports, and incidentally, so that reforming the gas price benchmark in the EU, the Amsterdam TTF, which they consider does not reflect the weight of the GLN in the market and is fertile ground for speculation. Von der Leyen agreed that it is necessary to create an alternative to the TTF, and associates this idea with a possible maximum purchase price for gas while it is being designed. This reform is rejected by the Netherlands, Germany or the Nordic countries.