European ministers pulled off what one diplomat called a miracle in July when they took just six days to agree to slash gas demand,
Bloomberg reports. Ever since, the bloc’s timelines have been slipping, and it now looks unlikely key new measures will be in place for winter.
Ministers set another new deadline when they met on Tuesday, and now aim to clinch a deal on the latest batch of proposals to tame energy prices on Nov. 24 -- well into the heating season. But even if they manage it, key measures like a new market benchmark won’t kick in until the spring. Plans for price caps remain mired in technical details and political wrangling.
The market is giving policymakers a breather: there’s a glut of gas in Europe right now as efforts to bring in shiploads of LNG have coincided with unusually warm weather. But as the risk of a full-blown energy crisis recedes, so does the impetus to act.
Another challenge is that some diplomats think it’s not possible to have both types of price caps implemented at the same time. At several EU meetings, even the definition of a price cap has been left deliberately vague, and some countries still can’t agree on what it should mean.
