European Union leaders are divided on gas price cap at energy crisis summit

BRUSSELS —  European Union leaders stood divided Thursday on whether, and how, the bloc could impose a gas price cap to contain the energy crisis fueled by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his strategy to choke off gas supplies to the bloc at will.

And, for once, the traditional driving duo of the EU — Germany and France — were in opposing camps at the two-day summit in Brussels, with Germany expressing doubts and holding off plans for the price cap, while most others want to push on.

“Our role is to make sure that there is a European unity and that Germany is part of it,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “It is not good either for Germany or Europe that it isolates itself. It is important that on proposals that are the subject of a broad consensus, we can find unanimity.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said any dispute was on the method, not the goal.

“Prices for gas, for oil, for coal, must sink; electricity prices must sink, and this is something that calls for a joint effort by all of us in Europe,” Scholz said.

The Netherlands too said it feared that if a price cap were set too high, supplies would simply sail by Europe and go elsewhere.

“Everyone wants the gas price to come down, but you want to make sure that gas imports keep coming,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

It set the scene for arduous talks that were unlikely to be settled by Friday afternoon, when the summit is set to end.

At the opening of the meet, the need for rock-solid EU unity in confronting Russia was highlighted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who addressed the 27 national leaders by video conference from Kyiv, asking for continued help to get his nation through the winter.

Scholz said Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure and its use of killer drones amounted to “war crimes.”

“Even such scorched-earth tactics won’t help Russia win the war,” he told Parliament in Berlin. “They only strengthen the determination and staying power of Ukraine and its partners.”

The upcoming cold season will also be front and center at EU headquarters, where leaders will turn on their own heat in talks that are expected to run deep into the night.

Natural gas prices spiraled out of control over the summer as EU nations sought to outbid one another to fill up their reserves for winter. Now EU leaders will seek to increasingly pool their purchases of gas and perhaps set a temporary price cap to make sure an overheated energy market doesn’t return to haunt them again.

The member states have already agreed to cut demand for gas by 15% over the winter. They have also committed to filling gas-storage facilities to at least 80% of capacity by November and — as a way of reducing gas-fired power generation — to reducing peak demand for electricity by at least 5%.

The question of possible EU gas-price caps has moved steadily up the political agenda for months as the energy squeeze tightened, with 15 countries such as France and Italy pushing for such blunt intervention.

And where Angela Merkel was the soothing voice often brokering a compromise during her 16 years as German chancellor, Scholz is now at the heart of a division in the bloc.

Germany and the Netherlands maintain that market interventions such as excessive price caps could hurt the availability of natural gas and incentives for governments and consumers to save it.

A plan for the EU to pool joint purchases of gas and measures to improve solidarity with EU nations most hurt by the spiraling energy prices was expected to receive much more support, diplomats said.

Russia is increasingly relying on drone strikes against Ukraine’s energy grid and civilian infrastructure and sowing panic with hits on Ukrainian cities, tactics that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called “war crimes” and “pure terror” on Wednesday.

Diplomats are assessing more sanctions. But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s perceived friendliness toward the Kremlin makes life tougher. Even though the previous EU sanctions targeting Russia have been approved unanimously, it has increasingly become difficult to keep Orban on board by agreeing to exemptions.

“Anyone who calls for the mitigation of sanctions against Russia for terror or tries to politically torpedo the sanctions mechanism is not only trying to make Russian terror go unpunished, and not only betrays the memory of the victims of terror, but also makes the entire European Community dependent on the most anti-European power in the modern world,” Zelensky said.

Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.