EU energy ministers to hold emergency meeting to ‘fix’ market: Czech minister

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) - Czech Republic’s industry and trade minister on Monday said that he has called an emergency meeting of EU ministers in charge of energy to relaunch the functioning of the market.

“We must fix the energy market. Solution on the EU level is by far the best we have,” Jozef Sikela said on Twitter, announcing that EU energy ministers will meet on Sept. 9 in Brussels.

Speaking at a news conference, Sikela also stated that he called for the extraordinary meeting because the European energy market “really stopped working, froze, and we have to fix it,” the Czech media reported.

He explained that the price of natural gas has risen from €18 ($18) to €310 ($310) megawatt per hour (MWh) since June.

Sikela claimed that “Europe has made one big mistake” of being “naive” and believing that “Russia can be a reliable partner and it is possible to base European energy security on cheap gas supplies from Russia.”

At the same time, he admitted that in addition to the war in Ukraine, other factors, such as the “bad situation of nuclear power plants in France” have also contributed to the dramatic rise in energy prices.

Several EU governments, including Germany, Austria, and Belgium, have recently called to reform the pricing mechanism of the European energy market and to decouple gas and electricity markets.

Under the current system, the final electricity price is based on the price of the last and the most expensive energy source and does not reflect the lower costs of renewables or nuclear power.

“Electricity is produced today at a price that is much lower than the price at which electricity and gas are sold. There is no longer any link between the cost of production and the selling price,” Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten said on Sunday on Twitter.

Spain, Greece, Italy, France and Portugal have been advocating for reforms on separating gas market price from the price of the rest of sources that are produced way cheaper.