Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday hailed a campaign by a majority of EU governments pushing the European Commission to impose a price cap on natural gas wholesale prices.
Greece is among 15 countries that wrote a letter to EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, asking the Commission to produce a proposal for an EU-wide cap ahead of the emergency meeting of the bloc’s energy ministers on Thursday.
“Great news in the fight against high energy prices! A majority of 15 member states now back the request to the Commission to implement a price cap on natural gas,” Mitsotakis tweeted on Wednesday.
The tweet contains an attached copy of the letter.
Bellow is a copy of the full letter.
The energy crisis that started last fall has gotten worse over time and is now causing untenable inflationary pressures which are hitting our households and our businesses hard. We acknowledge the efforts made by the Commission and the measures it has put forward to face the crisis. But we have yet to tackle the most serious problem of all: the wholesale price of natural gas. The price cap that has been requested since the beginning by an ever increasing number of member states is the one measure that will help every member state to mitigate the inflationary pressure, manage expectations and provide a framework in case of potential supply disruptions, and limit the extra profits in the sector.
The cap should be applied to all wholesale natural gas transactions, and not limited to import from specific jurisdictions. It can be designed in such a way as to ensure security of supply and the free flow of gas within Europe, while achieving our shared objective to reduce gas demand. This cap is the priority and can be complemented with proposals to strengthen the financial oversight of the gas market and develop alternative benchmarks for gas pricing in Europe.
In light of the above, we the undersigned Ministers of Energy call on you to present us with a proposal in this direction to be discussed at the extraordinary Energy Council of 30 September, followed by a legislative proposal as soon as possible.