BRUSSELS (Dispatches) —
European Union leaders struggled to find immediate practical solutions at their summit Thursday called to grapple with the energy crisis fueled by the war in Ukraine.
After lengthy talks in Brussels dragged well into the night, the 27 EU leaders could not bridge divisions between some of the biggest member states and failed to impose a gas price cap on Russia’s oil and energy sectors.
They agreed, however, to keep working to find a compromise on a list of measures based on proposals unveiled earlier this week by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, which were discussed in depth and tweaked at the summit.
“There is a strong and unanimously shared determination to act together, as Europeans, to achieve three goals: lowering prices, ensuring security of supply and continuing to work to reduce demand,” said meeting host Charles Michel, the EU Council president.
Diplomats said the impact of the proposals, which include the possibility of a price cap, should be properly assessed by experts before approval, and leaders insisted any deal would need to take into account their different energy mixes.
“There is a lot of work ahead,” said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “We are pushing ourselves into unchartered territory, where we don’t have experience yet.”
The bloc’s energy ministers will meet next week to further discuss the benchmarks set out by leaders.
To make sure the runaway cost of gas doesn’t further tank struggling EU economies, the Commission has proposed a system to pool buying of gas and offered a compromise that would allow for a correction mechanism to kick in exceptional circumstances.
Divisions were so big at the start of the summit that agreeing on further exploration of the plan proposed by the Commission was seen as almost an achievement in itself.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said a price cap would send suppliers away.
The traditional driving duo of the EU — Germany and France — were in opposing camps, with Germany expressing doubts and holding off plans for the price cap, while most others want to push on.
French president Emmanuel Macron said he worked hard with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in bilateral exchanges to get a breakthrough on the issue.
Macron, who will meet again with Scholz next week in Paris, said it was “France’s role to create unanimity between positions.”
Scholz said any dispute was on the method, not the goal. “Prices for gas, for oil, for coal, must sink; electricity prices must sink, and this is something that calls for a joint effort by all of us in Europe,” he said.
The Netherlands feared that if a price cap was set too high, supplies would simply sail by Europe and go elsewhere. “Everyone wants the gas price to come down, but you want to make sure that gas imports keep coming,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.
Natural gas prices spiraled out of control over the summer as EU nations sought to outbid one another to fill up their reserves for winter. The member states have already agreed to cut demand for gas by 15% over the winter. They have also committed to filling gas-storage facilities to at least 80% of capacity by November and — as a way of reducing gas-fired power generation — to reducing peak demand for electricity by at least 5%.