Apart from the public statements and facade optimism of almost all 27 EU heads of state and government, last week’s Extraordinary Council of Versailles ended with a significant hole in the water. In fact, Europe has not been able to pull the ranks of an energy crisis that is upon us. And the unity of purpose and determination expressed in the collective response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not become the weapons with which we can collectively fight what Draghi calls “our crises.” Emergencies, says the prime minister, which must be “resolved” as quickly as possible in order to “protect the European economies from the consequences of the war,” particularly “from increases in energy prices.” On this point, however, the EU has chosen to take its time, packed with the traditional tug-of-war between Mediterranean countries and Northern hawks. This is understandable, what characterized the dispute over the funds for the reconstruction plan for months.
Same scheme, identical contrasts and usual rigidity. It’s not a detail, the economic consequences of the war that Putin wanted have been on everyone’s lips for weeks. And despite this time, as happened instead between February and March 2020 with the Covid emergency, no one can really be under the illusion that there will be no relapses. Maybe that’s why the Mediterranean Front decided to keep going. And he decided to meet yesterday in Rome at Villa Madama. A four-party summit, with Draghi, Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez, Portugal’s Costa and – linked to Athens, because of Covid – Greece’s Mitsotakis. A meeting wanted by Sanchez, which publicly acknowledges the former number one of the ECB and which aims to formalize a convergence of interests around a few key goals: to keep a pro-European government firmly on its feet and united for the joint purchase and storage of energy to fight. All points on which Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki “strongly” agrees. We have to “convince” the EU countries that “they have different needs than we do,” said the four prime ministers at the Villa Madama press conference. Because, Sanchez explains, European unity was strong in its reaction to “Putin’s war,” but it must be just as strong “in view of the economic consequences” of Russian aggression. In short, we need “a unified response” to the energy crisis. Which, on the concrete question, overcomes the declared hostility of Berlin and the well-known embarrassment of Paris.
This is the unspoken publicity of yesterday’s summit, the main driver of a summit aiming to create a united front in view of next week’s European Council. Costa says this clearly and hopes that the Brussels summit of March 24-25 “will not be a meeting to which everyone puts off”, as happened in France, but a summit “where effective decisions will finally be taken”. . Because, explains Mitsotakis, “the gas emergency is a danger that threatens the recovery” and “can awaken the nightmare of populism”. For that, says Draghi, we would have to “intervene immediately”, do something “essential” “immediately”.
Last night the Council of Ministers approved another package of measures to tackle high energy prices, but it is clear that a real change of pace can only be achieved with a European front. “Common storage – explains Draghi – allows us to protect each other in the event of individual shocks. Joint purchases give us a better negotiating weight ». And again: we must “limit the import price of gas” and “separate the electricity market from the gas market”. Problems – according to the message from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece – that Germany and France must take up.