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Gas pipeline from Norway
Photo: Stringer/AP
It was a far-reaching promise that Ursula von Leyen made to the members of the European Parliament.
In order to relieve inflation-plagued consumers, the international community wants to introduce a price cap when purchasing gas from countries such as Norway, Algeria or the USA, the President of the EU Commission announced in Strasbourg.
She spoke of a "temporary solution" that "must be designed appropriately" in order to "guarantee security of supply".
A week later, few believe that the plan will quickly become a reality.
At their meeting in Prague on Wednesday, the continent's energy ministers were once again unable to agree on a concept for a price limit for purchasing.
And it is unlikely that the heads of government will find a compromise at their summit next week.
Instead, there is a growing realization in Brussels that a price cap would only cure the symptoms of the gas crisis, but would hardly get rid of the root of the problem.
Norway threatens
Since gas has hardly flowed from Russia to Europe, the fuel has been delivered to EU countries from all over the world in huge tankers.
The so-called liquefied natural gas (LNG) is scarce and expensive, and so the fuel on the world market now costs around three times as much as it did before the Ukraine war.
The producers' profits are correspondingly large, a nuisance that a growing number of EU countries no longer want to accept so easily.
15 countries from Italy to Latvia have therefore called for an EU-wide price cap for gas to be introduced.
The only problem is that the lack of fuel might not become smaller, but rather larger.
Other customers in Asia, for example, could then offer more money and direct the coveted energy to their ports.
The union of states should not hope for the good will of friendly supplier countries like Norway.
At the Prague meeting, Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Aasland warned that he doesn't think a price cap is a good idea, only to then follow up with a barely veiled threat.
It is "very important" for his country, he said, "to maintain the high level of gas exports to the European market in order to stabilize it."
If the price limit deters suppliers like Norway, the problems for the EU will be even greater.
Then the community would have to decide who gets the fuel – and who might not.
Experts fear that countries with sufficient liquid gas capacities such as Spain or Belgium would then have an advantage over recipient countries such as Germany.
"It would be a problem for Germany if you couldn't bid higher than other member states to get the gas you need in Germany," says Georg Zachmann, an economist at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.
So it is that a price cap for gas purchases in the state union hardly seems enforceable at the moment.
Too many states have reservations, and the experts in the EU Commission also warn against overly aggressive interventions in the energy markets.
Germany and the Netherlands have therefore presented their own concept to depress gas prices in Europe.
There is "no simple solution to the problem," says their paper.
Rather, what is needed is a "bundle of measures" with which the causes of the gas price inflation should be combated: the low supply, the excessive demand and the lack of coordination in the state union.
Europe's gas storage facilities are to be filled earlier
In detail, the German-Dutch initiative aims to buy gas together in the future in order to negotiate better conditions.
The European gas storage facilities are also to be coordinated and filled earlier in the future so that the EU countries do not outbid each other.
The expansion of renewable energies must be accelerated and the savings targets for gas consumption must be tightened.
There should also be a price cap, but only for Russian gas and only if the mostly Eastern European countries, which still get fuel from Siberia, agree.
No wonder the meeting of European energy ministers ended in a stalemate.
For the time being, there will be no price cap when purchasing gas, at most there will be an upper limit for fuels used in electricity production.
The central element of the package of measures that the EU Commission intends to put together by next week will be joint gas purchasing, which has been discussed in Europe for months.
So it must "finally start now," says the German State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Sven Giegold.
Sometimes it's the lowest common denominator that brings the greatest gains.