EU leaders united against Russia, divided over energy summit
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has shown rock-solid unity in confronting Russia over its war in Ukraine, but EU leaders lack that common purpose heading into Thursday’s summit to seek joint measures to contain an energy crisis that has already dented their economy and threatens to spread hardship among the bloc's 450 million people this winter.
Natural gas prices spiraled out of control over the summer as EU nations sought to outbid one another to fill up their reserves for winter. Now EU leaders will seek to increasingly pool their purchases of gas and set a temporary price cap to make sure an overheated energy market does not return to haunt them again.
The 27-nation bloc hit Russia with a series of economic sanctions since the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded by choking off pipelines that used to send plentiful oil and gas to stoke the wheels of industry across much of the EU.
“Russia has systemically tried to blackmail us through energy,” said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Most EU leaders have vowed to stay the course in the standoff with Putin. But authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is bent on being a spoiler at the energy summit, contradicting most leaders by saying that the EU sanctions on Russia primarily hurt EU citizens, not Putin.
In addition, finding a common answer to Europe's energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine is proving to be a tall order. The two-day summit, said host Charles Michel, “will be difficult.”
Many EU nations are ready to embrace a proposal to cap natural gas prices, but Germany and the Netherlands have raised major issues about that.
A senior German official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department rules, was adamant about Germany’s...
