Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo is reported to have complained during last week's EU summit that it was "interesting how more and more when we have problems in national domains, everyone asks Europe to intervene". It was hardly a new insight though he could have added that, more and more, EU leaders are rediscovering their political constraints, notably the stultifying self-imposed requirement for consensus, on common action.
The European Council’s debate on energy and soaring gas prices revealed fundamental differences in both assessment and approaches that saw leaders only able to agree a package of short- term measures – income support for vulnerable households, state aid for struggling firms, and reductions in taxes and levies. Ultimately the issue was seen as one for member states or the working through of market forces. The commission was asked only “to swiftly consider medium- and long-term measures that would contribute to energy at a price that is affordable . . .”
"We need to find a solution without shutting down markets," German chancellor Angela Merkel told the press. Likewise Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte preferred to wait out high prices, believing them to be temporary. Radical measures, such as Spanish calls for the EU to buy gas in common to avail of greater purchasing power and bring down prices, were kicked down the road.
Leaders were anxious not to conflate the issues of the immediate gas price rises with the EU's climate change green transition programme on which there is broad agreement, albeit with reservations. Merkel is understood to have cautioned against pushing China too hard on coal use which Beijing argues will simply push up gas demand and prices. And there were tensions over the disputed extension of the union's emissions trading system (ETS) to include housing and cars, and the extent to which it contributes to price hikes. The ETS requires polluting industries to buy and trade carbon permits whose prices have increased 80 per cent this year.
Poland and the Czech Republic also want the council to back gas, a major carbon source, as a transition fuel towards a green economy, while France leads a group of 10 countries pushing to classify nuclear energy in the EU's guidelines for green investments. There are disagreements too on the union's reliance on Russia for gas supplies.
The leaders' determination to avoid direct clashes, specifically with Poland, also saw a fudge in the debate on the rule of law there. Though overwhelming anger was manifest at the Polish constitutional court's assertion of its primacy over the Court of Justice of the EU, not least by the Taoiseach, the summit put off any decision about financial sanctions against Warsaw to await the result of the latter's court challenge to the new budget rule-of-law conditionality rules.