MADRID, 18 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has urged this Friday the European Commission to present “as soon as possible” a specific regulatory proposal on the cap on the price of gas to avoid “joking “in what European countries pay for this energy.
“Today, the only thing we have, and we will discuss it next week in Brussels in an extraordinary Energy Council, are some clues and general guidelines that go in the right direction, but that still fall very short,” Ribera stressed. in statements to TVE collected by Europa Press.
For the vice-president, it is important that the Commission makes it clear “before winter arrives” that Europe is only willing to pay up to a certain price level “equivalent to or even slightly above that of other world markets”. “But not to be fooled and to sell us the gas we need at any price,” she added.
Ribera stressed that the price of gas is “distorting” all energy prices in Europe and, therefore, inflation and the social and economic impacts, and recalled that, to a large extent, the price of gas depends how the markets estimate it and how the different references are used by the different operators.
Thus, Ribera welcomed the fact that Europe conveys that it is only willing to buy in a price environment with a minimum and a maximum, at the same time that it has shown itself to be in favor of having a “mixed and more stable” market reference, which takes into account consideration the reference of the price of gas in the Asian and American markets and not only that of the Dutch market.
But, for now, “there is no specific regulatory proposal” by the Commission, something that, according to Ribera, is a complaint from many Member States. “For a long time we have been asking the Commission, which is the one that has the capacity to initiate a legislative procedure, to come up with a concrete articulated proposal”, the vice-president stated.
