Wester van Gaal
The plan adopted on Wednesday concerns the Market Stability Reserve, a buffer mechanism that can inject or absorb free pollution permits to keep carbon prices from swinging too wildly.
Danish energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen tried in vain to convince EU ministers not to respond to a looming fuel shortage by subsidising fuel consumption, and instead to focus on getting people to use less of it.
Oil and gas push Europe’s inflation to steepest monthly rise since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Eurostat announces.
So far, member states are acting individually with a mixture tax-cuts, price controls, targeted subsidies and market rules. The result is a medley of policies, some of which accelerate decarbonisation and renewables, while others risk driving emissions higher, even as supply shortages loom.
A new report finds Brussels has made little headway in opening up Europe’s services markets since the landmark Services Directive came into force in 2006.
The deal grants Australia quota-based access for beef, lamb, and dairy products to the EU, while European exporters gain near-zero tariffs on vehicles, dairy, and other goods.
EU leaders failed to convince Hungary to lift its veto on Ukraine support, as president Volodomyr Zelensky lamented the blockage.
“Unfortunately, some governments are using this crisis and the rise in electricity prices to undermine climate policies,” Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchéz said on arrival at an EU leaders summit in Brussels.
A blocking minority of member states is pushing to weaken the bloc’s carbon pricing mechanism — which requires industries to pay for their pollution.
The so-called ’28th regime’ is intended to create a single European business code applicable across the EU.
EU leaders want the carbon market reviewed by July at the latest, instead of the currently planned third-quarter timeline, a leaked draft of next week’s European Council conclusions shows.
The letter signed by 100 European companies and investors rebuffs the anti-emissions trading push from governments and the chemicals lobby — showing that not all European firms are aligned on weakening carbon pricing.
Europe’s reaction to Monday’s oil-price surge was far from unified, with some officials calling for a faster shift to clean energy, while others said boosting oil and gas supplies offered the quickest path to easing a potential energy shock from the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The European Central Bank itself has repeatedly said over the years that its policies are ineffective when dealing with energy shocks.
After the college of commissioners failed to agree on many of the details of the Industrial Accelerator Act again on Monday, it will now be published in more limited form. Plans to bar non-EU producers from government contracts and funding have been delayed by six months.
The European gas price was 40 percent higher on Monday after Qatar halted liquid gas production.
‘We are not yet seeing the waves of redundancies that are feared’, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said, but stressed Europe was benefitting for AI-productivity gains on a par with the US and China.
Despite soaring trade imbalances and EU pressure, German chancellor Friedrich Merz stressed the need to fortify diplomatic and economic relations with China on his first Beijing visit.
The European Commission is planning to introduce “Made in EU” requirements across a wide range of strategic sectors, from chips, cars, and chemicals to quantum technologies and renewable energy.
One of the goals, according to EU economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis (whose team oversaw the report), was to identify “obstacles” to wider euro adoption.