BRUSSELS : 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.
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.”
APN
