EU chief urges leaders to agree on gas price cap

Ursula von der Leyen has said “exceptional times require exceptional measures”

The President of the European Commission has today urged EU leaders to vote in favour of a gas price cap.

In a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Ursula von der Leyen said: “Such a cap on gas prices must be designed properly to ensure the security of supply and it is a temporary solution to cater for the fact that the TTF that is our main price benchmark is no longer representative for our market.

“This TTF benchmark mirrors a lot of pipeline gas, but in the last seven months, we have because we wanted to get rid of the dependency on the Russian gas we have increased a lot the LNG market and this LNG market is not properly reflected in the TTF.

“So, introducing a cap on gas overall is a temporary solution until we will have a new EU Price Index developed that ensures better functioning of the market.”

The EU chief stressed that “exceptional times require exceptional measures” – Ms von der Leyen added that Europe needed to “act as jointly and as united as ever”.

The President of the European Commission has also addressed the “sabotage” against Nord Stream gas pipelines.

She said: “These acts have shown how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is – for the first time in recent history, it has become a target. It is in the interest of all Europeans to better protect this critical infrastructure.

“We need to stress test our infrastructure. We don’t have to wait till something happens but we need to make sure that we are prepared and therefore, we need these stress tests,”

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