Foreign Minister Calls EU Gas Price Cap Plan Dangerous

There is still no decision on the EU gas price cap, but several particularly dangerous elements have been removed from the original proposal, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said at a press conference following the EU energy ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.

According to Hungarian news agency MTI, he stressed that the vast majority of Member States, almost all of them except Hungary, could accept the introduction of the price cap, but there are still differences of opinion on the details.

We think that a gas cap is a bad, unnecessary and dangerous idea to tackle the energy crisis,”

he said, adding that the planned measure would be a crude artificial intervention in the gas market, while the EU has never done so before.

At the same time, Szijjártó welcomed the fact that two particularly dangerous elements were removed from the proposal.

• The first was to regulate OTC transactions from the point of view of price, which would have reduced Member States’ freedom and possibilities to purchase gas, since it would not have been possible to conclude contracts on a bilateral basis without respecting the price cap, he said.
• The second, and even more important, element was that the amendment of long-term gas contracts would have required consultation with the European Commission, which according to Szijjártó, would have “totally destroyed the security of Hungarian gas supply.”

The minister said that he had a phone call the previous day with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who had “expressed his openness” to amending the long-term gas purchase agreement between the two countries, if the introduction of the price cap made this necessary.

For us, the security of gas supply to Hungary is the most important thing, we have to guarantee it, this is the number one priority,”

the Foreign Minister stressed.

Featured photo via Facebook/Szijjártó Péter