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European Union leaders on Friday agreed to give more financial and military aid to Ukraine, but a full day of talks in Prague's ornate royal castle seemed to bring them no closer to deciding on whether or how to cap gas prices.
Most of the EU's 27 countries want a cap on gas prices, but disagree on the details, with options including a cap on all gas, a "dynamic corridor", a price ceiling on gas used for power generation specifically or on Russian gas only.
The EU has been discussing the matter for weeks, so far without result, although the 27 have agreed other joint steps to help them weather an acute energy crunch as runaway prices threaten to bring about a recession in the bloc.
"Everyone agrees we need to lower power prices but there is no agreement what instruments to use to that end exactly," Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.
Italy's Mario Draghi said the bloc's executive European Commission would present for the next meeting of EU leaders on October 20 to 21 a broader package of short-term measures to lower prices and longer-term steps to redesign the electricity market.
The cap is one of a range of proposals and initiatives by European states to cope with plummeting gas supplies from Russia, which once supplied 40 percent of Europe's needs, and rocketing prices. They have eased off this year's peaks but remain more than 200 percent higher than at the start of September 2021.
Germany and Denmark oppose a cap, worried that it would make it difficult to buy the gas their economies need and dampen any incentive to reduce consumption.
（Reuters)
