The European Commission is preparing a plan against a new energy crisis next winter

The European Commission is developing a special anti-crisis plan to provide natural gas and other energy resources for next winter. The reason is in the forecasts that the situation with the supply of natural gas will not improve until then and that Member States will face even higher and highly volatile energy prices in 2023. This was reported by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing of documents at his disposal.

According to them, Brussels is working on organizing additional measures to ensure access to energy and increase storage capacity. Thus, the EC believes that together with contingency plans, they will protect the EU from shocks in energy markets.

According to the German publication, the reason for the actions taken by Brussels is the high demand for natural gas on a global scale, as well as some geopolitical factors, including the current crisis around Ukraine. "In the medium term, energy prices will remain volatile until at least 2023, and will be higher than last year," experts told Welt am Sonntag.

The new anti-crisis plan in question is expected to be unveiled by EC Vice President Frans Timmermans on March 2nd, and could undergo a number of changes in the meantime. Legislative initiatives are also present in the documents available to the German edition. In one of them it is written that the EC proposes that the Member States be legally obliged to guarantee certain quantities of natural gas reserves by September 30 of each following year. However, there is still no concrete information on what these guaranteed volumes should be, which means that the issue is still under discussion. However, it is envisaged that EU countries will be able to exercise stricter control over local gas storage operators, including imposing obligations on them to maintain certain reserves. The document also provides for member states to determine how much volume should be pumped into national and regional gas storage facilities at the beginning of each heating season.

The EC plan also provides for governments to be allowed to provide financial support to storage operators, so that countries will be able to bear the financial risk of price fluctuations. Under certain conditions and in certain situations, they will be able to provide such assistance directly.

The plan also mentions the launch of a pilot project on another measure that has been talked about for several months - Member States to start negotiating and buying certain quantities of natural gas together. For some time now, some EU countries, such as Spain and Italy, have been insisting on this possibility, TASS reminds.