(d Just born and already dead and buried.
The controversial price cap of 275 euros per megawatt hour proposed by the European Commission displeases everyone
and puts the energy ministers, expected in Brussels, at a dead end. From which it will be difficult to get out in the weeks ahead to come.
The first reactions from the capitals, which have already begun to sharpen their weapons in view of the confrontation with the EU executive, are proof of this.
Starting from the vast majority of countries - Rome in the lead - that have been invoking the zip code for some time but certainly not in the numbers and methods of the Ursula von der Leyen one.
Recriminations to which the handful of opponents join, led by Germany and the Netherlands, who do not really want to hear about the mechanism.
And, as if that weren't enough, the markets don't seem to like it either, with
gas flying again, touching 130 euros per megawatt
hour in Amsterdam with an increase of 8.34%, after reaching a maximum for the day of 133.9 euros (+11%).
The day after the troubled proposal, the rain of criticisms on Palazzo Berlaymont is incessant.
Some brand the legislative text as 'a game', some as a design 'completely out of place' and some express deep 'dissatisfaction'.
So much so that, it is the joke that circulates in the European chancelleries, the European Commission has managed to get everyone to agree.
With a single common denominator that also emerged from the meeting of EU ambassadors, described by many as very political:
the proposal must be scuttled
.
And under several points of view, from the threshold (considered decidedly too high) to the activation methods, which provide that the quotation remains above 275 euros per megawatt hour for two consecutive weeks and that the spread with the global reference indices for LNG is at least 58 euros per megawatt hour for 10 consecutive days.
A scenario in which - it is also ironic on the web - the planets should align and which did not even occur during the August price crisis.
On balance, for Italy the EU cap as it stands "risks being ineffective, a mere flag" which, argued the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security,
Gilberto Pichetto
, instead of curbing speculation would only blowing on it, proving to be counterproductive.
Nothing more than "a little mouse born from the European mountain" is the image used by government colleague
Adolfo Urso
, Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy.
Even the Spanish minister Teresa Ribeira said she was ready to "strongly" oppose a text that seems "a game", guilty of "generating the opposite effect to the desired one" with "a greater artificial increase in prices", while from Warsaw a "worried" prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki aims to team up with his counterparts in Visegrad.
And Paris' judgment is lapidary: the proposal, government sources have ruled, "is
insufficient, ineffective and inconsistent
" and now Brussels must present "feasible and operational solutions", not make "political propaganda".
A request that the alliance of fifteen countries supporting the cap (including Belgium, Greece and Croatia) is ready to deliver directly to the EU Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, the scapegoat for a battle that has been going on for six months.
