Prime Minister António Costa participated in a meeting with his Italian counterparts, Mario Draghi, Spanish, Pedro Sánchez, and Greek, Kyriako Mitsotakis - the latter remotely, by videoconference, as he contracted Covid-19 -, to agree positions and proposals on energy prices, with a view to the summit on 24 and 25 March.

At the end of the meeting, the four leaders indicated that they had reached an agreement on a common position – which will continue to be worked on at a more technical level by the energy ministers of the four countries – and that they will make the necessary diplomatic efforts to ensure consensus with the remaining countries 24 Member States, therefore, unanimously underlined, the current crisis requires “a European response”.

European response

António Costa said that the “core issue” of energy requires strategic responses from the EU but also “short-term”, to face the rise in prices, and he hoped that a decision would be taken.

“Obviously, a European-wide response is needed, just as it was only possible to respond to the challenge of Covid at European level. And that is why this meeting was very important, so that we can jointly align these four countries on a concrete proposal, which we will continue to work on with our colleagues, so that the next European Council on 24 and 25 March does not let it be one more that we ask the Commission for studies, let it no longer be one where we set guidelines, but one where we can adopt concrete decisions that are immediately applicable”, he declared.

António Costa defended that these decisions must essentially involve “the establishment of a maximum reference price for gas, thus avoiding contamination of the electricity price by the indiscriminate rise in the price of gas, and through a technical mechanism that allows paying the differential between the reference price and the price that currently exists on the market”.