Unity is strength, they say. To have more weight with gas suppliers and limit price increases, France has proposed to the other members of the European Union to put in place a “cap at 27 on gas prices”.
“We don’t produce gas, so the only thing we could consider, which we have proposed and which I have defended with my European counterparts, is the idea of having a cap at 27 on gas prices “, explained Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy during a hearing before the Finance and Economic Affairs Committees of the National Assembly.
According to him, this would make it possible to negotiate “with our three main suppliers: Russia, Norway and Algeria, a price of 27 which is a capped price”. The idea is to impose a maximum price on the producing companies.
No positive reception
The fact remains that this proposal, according to the Minister of the Economy, has not yet received a unanimous positive reception from the other EU member countries. “It would be a market intervention that hurts some of our European partners,” he added.
Already at the beginning of March, the minister had already pleaded for a “European collective solution”, evoking “group purchases, in common to unite and obtain lower prices”.
In any case, the discussions must continue with the next European summit on March 24 and 25 in sight.
Since the fall of 2021, France has frozen the price of gas sold to French households by compensating for this freeze to suppliers who continue to supply themselves on markets where gas prices have soared for several months. This measure was initially to cost 1.2 billion euros to the State, but now, Bruno Le Maire estimates its cost at 6.4 billion euros.
Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium and the Netherlands have decided to lower their VAT on energy, while Poland has purely and simply abolished it for gas. Germany, for its part, has chosen to deploy public aid for the heating of this energy.