Several European country leaders are urging the European Commission to review the ETS system, Kallanish learns.
Italy’s president Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Belgian’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever as well as several other country leaders held an informal meeting last week in Alden Biesen, Belgium, to discuss European competitiveness. The focus of their meeting was regulatory simplification, a reduction of energy prices as well as trade policies.
Meloni has called for a rapid revision of the ETS mechanism and a stop to the “financial speculation” behind the system, she has reportedly told the press on the sidelines of the informal meeting.
Amongst other measures to relaunch the European industry Meloni states that one of the main issues is the energy costs and the revision of other systems such as CBAM is necessary for Europe’s industrial relaunch.
“For our country, where unlike in the rest of Europe natural gas-fired generation is the main source of electricity production, the distortion created by the ETS system is particularly significant. The specific nature of our energy mix, combined with the ETS framework introduced in Brussels, has resulted in Italy having the highest electricity prices in Europe for too long,” Antonio Gozzi, president of steel producers’ association Federacciai says in a note obtained by Kallanish.
“This has forced the government to introduce protection measures for energy-intensive consumers, who are fully exposed to the unsustainable price gap compared with their counterparts in France and Germany. Now that the issue has formally been raised at EU level, it will be essential to follow the dossier closely and consistently, in the interest of national competitiveness and the coherence of European energy policies,” he adds.
Gozzi says that for the first time, the issue of ETS shortcomings has been placed at the centre of the political debate in Brussels.
Commission President von der Leyen has outlined the actions needed to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, speaking at the Parliament plenary session, the Antwerp European Industry Summit and at an informal leaders’ meeting in Alden Biesen. “We have the second-largest economy in the world, but we are driving it with the handbrake on,” she says in her statement following the informal retreat obtained by Kallanish.
“To the next European Council, I will bring different options and findings on whether it is time to move forward on the market design or whether we are still good on this market design. And we will come as planned and as it is in the law with an ETS review,” she states.
