EU energy ministers are meeting again today in Brussels to try to reach a compromise on the mechanism for correcting the gas market, in which case they will have to agree on a 'ceiling' for the price of imports.

At Thursday's summit in Brussels, the leaders of the 27 countries urged their energy ministers to reach an agreement at today's meeting on the gas market correction mechanism, and in particular a cap on import prices on the European stock exchange, in order to "protect citizens and the economy".

"The European Council welcomes the progress achieved and invites the Council to conclude its work on [...] a regulation establishing a market correction mechanism to protect citizens and the economy against excessively high prices," the EU leaders stress in the summit conclusions.

The appeal to the energy ministers came after they again failed to reach an agreement last Tuesday due to divergent positions between the countries on price caps and requirements.

On the occasion, the Secretary of State for Energy, João Galamba, who will once again represent Portugal at the discussions today, pointed out that "there has been some progress, there has been consensus on a large part of the proposal, namely some safeguards that were wanted by some of the countries, but there has been no agreement on the central issue, which is the question of the price level at which this market correction mechanism would be activated."

The Secretary of State nevertheless expressed hope that a compromise could be reached at today's Energy Council.

At issue is the temporary emergency measure proposed at the end of November by the European Commission to create a price correction mechanism in certain transactions on the Securities Transfer Market for natural gas, the TTF, which could be activated by high prices for several consecutive days to limit excessive increases.

While countries such as Portugal, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Malta, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Italy and Slovenia accepted a ceiling of between 200 and 220 euros per Megawatt-hour (MWh) for three consecutive days, proposed by the Czech presidency of the EU to make it easier to activate this correction mechanism, other countries such as Germany and the Netherlands argued for security of supply, preferring the option proposed by the European Commission of 275 euros per MWh for 10 consecutive days, which could make it difficult to apply.

This "measure of last resort" aims to tackle situations of excessive prices by setting a maximum dynamic price at which natural gas transactions can take place one month in advance on the TTF markets, the main European natural gas exchange.

The EU executive wants to go ahead with this temporary mechanism to limit prices in the TTF while it works on a new complementary reference index, which it will present at the beginning of 2023.

At today's meeting, European ministers will also try to give the green light to joint gas purchases, similar to the scheme implemented for anti-COVID-19 vaccines, but which are not expected to go ahead until the spring of 2023.

Solidarity rules will also be discussed in the EU to make gas available to all member states in the event of an emergency, such as a disruption in Russian supplies, ensuring that countries are able to access the reserves of others, not least because only 18 of the EU bloc's 27 countries have storage infrastructures.

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