Why energy ministers cannot agree on gas price caps

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express.

Sad news from the UK, where Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday after a reign of 70 years. European leaders expressed their condolences, with France’s Emmanuel Macron tweeting that “I remember her as a friend of France, a kind-hearted queen who has left a lasting impression on her country and her century”. In Brussels, EU Council President Charles Michel wrote that “she never failed to show us the importance of lasting values in a modern world with her service and commitment” and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas that “it’s the end of an era but her legend will live on and inspire”. It is now King Charles III who has become the monarch, the oldest heir to take the crown.

Back on the agenda of the day, energy ministers are gathering in Brussels for their emergency council seeking ways to bring down the price of electricity and gas. But despite all the anticipation and a flurry of policy proposals, diplomats have rather modest expectations for today’s meeting. We will run you through what the main sticking points are and where more detail is needed before capitals show their hand.

With Swedish elections happening on Sunday, we will look at the odds of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson staying in power in these troubled times.

And as the European parliament prepares to debate the Greek spy scandal in Strasbourg next week, we will give you the rundown of what happened in the dedicated inquiry committee yesterday.

Much ado about nothing

A week ago Brussels was in a froth of agonised discussions and working papers to figure out how to save Europe from an energy crisis that is hitting consumers, industry and the financial sector alike, write Alice Hancock and Valentina Pop in Brussels.

Gazprom’s decision last week to cut gas supplies through the critical Nord Stream 1 pipeline “indefinitely” increased the chilling likelihood of a winter with no Russian gas at all.

Fast forward seven days to today’s emergency meeting of energy ministers and there appears to be lots of outward expressions of EU unity but little expectation that anything concrete will be done soon.

“The council and such will be a first step to tell the commission what and where the member states are willing and ready to go,” said one EU diplomat.

“We are open,” said another before stating a list of measures that they had reservations about, including unilateral price caps on gas from third countries and changes to the electricity market.

Some diplomats expressed frustration at the lack of detail in all the recent draft proposals coming from the European Commission.

“It’s a bit of a messy situation,” said one diplomat. “It’s hard to say what the picture is [among ambassadors] because proposals moved so fast. And none of the papers are detailed on how each measure would work.”

The most realistic scenario is for the commission to gauge the support for a price cap on Russian gas or on all gas, and on a proposed windfall tax today, and then table legislative proposals next week after commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech in Strasbourg.

Given that this is emergency legislation, diplomats expect the laws to be passed by a majority vote in the council, rather than unanimity — the way the voluntary gas reduction targets were adopted in July, even though Hungary did not sign up to them.

Would you be in favour of an EU price cap on Russian gas? Tell us what you think and click here to take the poll.

Chart du jour: Asian rescue

Read more here about how Indian and Chinese oil purchases have offset most of the drop in Russian shipments to Europe, raising questions about the impact of sanctions on Moscow.

Swedish nail-biter

Sweden votes in parliamentary elections on Sunday that promise to be a real nail-biter, writes Richard Milne, Nordic and Baltic Correspondent.

Opinion polls suggest a dead heat currently between the ruling centre-left bloc of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and the opposition rightwing, with each side enjoying a slender lead in recent days.

After a four-year period of parliamentary chaos with the Social Democrats ruling with opposition budgets, the shortest-serving prime minister of recent times, and a government saved several times only because of its support for Kurdish rights, there is little sense that Sweden’s long-held political stability will return.

Both the left and right could struggle to form viable coalitions because of the breadth of the parties contained. Andersson needs to bridge the gap between the ex-Communist of the Left and the liberal Centre party. On the right, the Liberals and radical right Sweden Democrats are far apart on many issues.

In a particularly heated, if not to say nasty, campaign, the nationalist Sweden Democrats may steal many of the headlines if they take second place as most opinion polls suggest. The ruling Social Democrats call them “neo-fascists” because of their roots in the neo-Nazi movement, but they have been largely proved right on law and order after an ever-increasing number of gangland shootings in Sweden’s troubled immigrant suburbs.

Second place would make it the biggest party on the right, and create a real headache for the mainstream conservative Moderate party, which would then try to claim the prime minister role despite coming in third place. The Social Democrats are all but certain to continue their record of coming in first place in every election for more than a century.

Voting takes place from 8am until 8pm on Sunday with exit polls expected as soon as polling stations close. Final results tend to arrive before midnight, but forming a coherent government could take a whole lot longer.

Greek spy scandal

The Greek wiretap saga was brought to Brussels yesterday during a European parliament hearing with a dedicated inquiry committee, writes Eleni Varvitsioti in Athens.

The scandal broke in August, after revelations that Nikos Androulakis, an MEP and head of Greece’s third-largest political party, was put under surveillance by the Greek intelligence service (EYP) when he was running for the leadership of his party last year. The revelations led to the resignations of the head of EYP and of Mitsotakis’s nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who was the prime minister’s general secretary.

Journalists Thanasis Koukakis and Stavros Malichudis, whose phones were also tapped by EYP, as well Eliza Triantafillou, an investigative reporter at the Greek media Inside Story, who looked into the use of Predator spyware in the country presented the complicated story, while MEPs heard from the president of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, and representatives from Greece’s ministries of digital governance and justice.

Even after three hours of grilling, the MEPs did not seem to become wiser as crucial information was not disclosed by the Greek officials who said that they could not comment on the ongoing investigation. Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld questioned whether Greek authorities were really investigating the matter, given that the company which sells the spyware and is based in Athens has not been raided by the authorities. “This has not been done yet,” she said, and that has allowed the company time to delete all its traces, she added.

At the same time in Athens, the national parliamentary inquiry, on its second day, had to end abruptly as the opposition legislators participating in the committee left in protest claiming that “essential witnesses” will not be allowed to testify and accusing the government majority of an attempted “cover-up”. 

What to watch today

1. EU energy ministers meet in Brussels for an emergency council

2. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels

3. EU finance ministers gather in Prague for an informal council

Smart reads

• Fixing the protocol: Even if relations between the UK and the EU are in a pretty bad place, it is possible to find a way forward, provided both sides are prepared to move and then engage in hard, detailed negotiation, writes the Centre for European Reform in this policy brief.

• Lack of detail: In this report published yesterday, the European Court of Auditors looked at the recovery plans of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Croatia, giving them overall a thumbs up, but noticing that some milestones “lacked clarity and did not cover key stages of implementation” and that some of the cost estimates lacked information.