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EU nations struggle to find joint approach on energy prices

Published:Friday | September 9, 2022 | 9:42 PM
Slovenia's Minister for Infrastructure Bojan Kumer speaks with the media as he arrives for a meeting of EU energy ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Friday, September 9, 2022. European Union energy ministers are holding emergency talks to discuss a price cap on Russian natural gas and a possible windfall levy on European oil and gas companies making extraordinary profits as the war in Ukraine drives up energy prices. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union nations struggled to find full consensus Friday on ways to shield the population from dramatically increasing energy prices that threaten to plunge millions into cold and poverty over the winter as Russia chokes off natural gas supplies.

As tensions with Moscow mount over the war in Ukraine, the energy ministers of the EU's 27 nations could not paper over differences on whether and how to impose a price cap on Russian natural gas, with ever-recalcitrant Hungary refusing to agree, saying it would go against its supply interests.

Other countries differed on whether a price cap should apply only to Russia or to other producers, too.

That “shows that this is a difficult issue and that the (European) Commission had a different goal,” said Agata Loskot-Strachota, senior fellow for energy policy at the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.

While EU members are most interested in lowering prices and getting enough gas, “the commission aimed at limiting Russia's revenues and, I think, taking back control of the situation on the European gas market.”

An immediate solution on all proposals to bring natural gas and electricity prices back to affordability had not been anticipated, but energy ministers gave general recommendations to the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, on options like instituting windfall levies on some energy companies whose profits have risen along with skyrocketing prices.

Moscow's gas restrictions and threat of a full cutoff has dominated the political agenda of a rich bloc of nations struggling to ensure basic services like heat and light.

Russia has cut back supplies of natural gas that power factories, generate electricity and heat homes, driving up prices and fuelling inflation that is poised to tip Europe into recession later this year.

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