The only concrete thing that came up at the informal EU summit at Alden Biesen Castle on Thursday was a proposal to separate gas from electricity in pricing. He stated that Prime Minister of the SR Robert Fico (Smer-SD) after the end of the negotiations, the TASR reporter informs.
On board the plane, Fico reminded journalists that a decision was made at the next summit in March, the president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, will present a summary of measures that should lead to an increase in the competitiveness of the EU as such. He said that it was said that the most serious problem that the Union has to deal with immediately is high energy prices. It is possible to increase competitiveness with medium-term or long-term measures, but we are all troubled by electricity prices.
“I welcomed that there is agreement at least in terms of urgency. I again used as an example what we did in connection with Slovac, when the previous government did not help this company and it had to close production due to high electricity prices,” he said. He added that instead of a factory that produced huge amounts of primary aluminum, the EU now imports several million tons of aluminum from China.
At the summit, Fico supported Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who criticized the system for selling emission allowances (ETS 1). “We argued that emission allowances have become the subject of speculation that they increase the price of electricity. There were various proposals, for example capping the maximum price of such an emission allowance at 30-40 euros. I was talking about four- or five-year vacations. But there are countries that do not want to leave this system and it will be very complicated to enforce any revision,” Fico explained.
The Prime Minister added that will continue to develop activities in relation to the European Commission, he will submit a proposal for the introduction of holidays regarding emission allowances and reminded that several prime ministers had reservations about the functioning of ETS 1, even the prime ministers of large states. According to his words the leaders had serious reservations about the fact that there are huge differences in electricity prices in Europe and that the single electricity market does not work.
While countries such as Spain and France have the price of electricity at the level of 50 or 60 euros per megawatt, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are above 100 euros and some countries are approaching the 200 euro mark. “The only concrete thing that fell there is that when the price of electricity is set, electricity is separated from gas, because the reference price of gas is important for setting the price of electricity. It is called decoupling. I hope that the European Commission will propose something like this, although it will be complicated to implement in practice.” bequeathed
Among other topics, he mentioned that the leaders talked about simplification and removing barriers. Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta presented a new concept of the single market, where, according to Fico, there are various interesting things, but these are projects for several years that do not solve the current situation.
“At least we all left the summit today saying that if we don’t do something about electricity prices, we will turn the European Union into a cultural open-air museum that will be visited by rich Chinese,” said Fico in conclusion, stating that the European Commission found itself under pressure and will have to come up with some solutions.
“Maybe some small adjustments will be made, but I don’t expect that there would be such measures that would ensure fairness, that the electricity prices would be the same within Europe. I still think there will be big regional differences,” he added.
