European Union ministers were trying again on Monday to finalize a long-awaited deal to implement a natural gas price cap that they hope can help households and businesses better weather excessive price surges.
The ministers have previously failed at overcoming their differences at five previous so-called emergency meetings, but several EU leaders said last week that fixing a maximum ceiling to pay for gas was likely to be achieved this time.
"Today, we have to agree on a well-known mechanism which will prevent the European households and businesses from high gas price spikes, as we have seen during the last summer," said Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council. "No one, least of all me, has anything against low prices on the gas market -- we have to bring gas prices down," German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday. "We just know from previous market interventions that we must be very careful not to want to do something good and trigger something bad."
Habeck said that the other side's position is "understandable," given Germany's energy policy of past years, but the EU should not "make a mistake that leads to a shortage -- that would affect large parts of Europe and not just Germany."
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