EU leaders seek to safeguard energy supplies as prices soar

BRUSSELS – European Union leaders struggled to find a common ground during a long debate on how to ease the pain of soaring energy bills.

The hours-long energy discussion at the EU leaders´ summit came amid spiraling prices that are pummeling households and businesses still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In need of immediate solutions, leaders are also seeking to safeguard energy supplies to the 27-nation bloc by speeding up the transition away from polluting fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives.

To help consumers and companies this winter, leaders agreed that tax cuts, state aid and other measures like bill payment deferrals proposed by the European Commission would be useful on both the short and longer terms.

In their conclusions, they asked the EU´s executive arm to look into the gas and electricity markets, as well as the bloc´s emissions trading program, under which companies pay for carbon dioxide they emit.

The aim is to check whether manipulation of the market could have influenced the carbon price increase, AP reported.

But there was no mention of setting up a joint procurement program for gas reserves, an idea recently proposed by Spain.

The talks came just 10 days ahead of the opening of a UN climate summit that is widely seen as the last chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU’s executive and its member states already are working to ease the burden of soaring energy bills on households and businesses.

She said leaders also will have to look at the way energy markets function but stressed that “in the mid and long term, it is very clear that the strategy has to be to invest massively in clean and renewable energy” produced in Europe.

The debate on spiraling energy prices also took place against a backdrop of frosty relations with Russia, a key supplier of gas to Europe.

Von der Leyen said Wednesday that with the bloc importing 90% of its gas – much of it from strategic rival Russia – “this makes us vulnerable.” Gas makes up one quarter of all European energy consumption.