Pressure on the ETS. Meloni tries to push through a review of the tax. The White House responds to the Prime Minister regarding the agreement with Putin

It has submitted a 23-billion-euro draft budgetary plan to the EU (with a 5-billion-euro contribution from banks and insurance companies). Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni, who has travelled to Brussels for the European Council, is putting forward Italy’s critical stance, particularly regarding the ETS scheme. In particular, Rome is aligning itself with the Visegrad Group countries on one side (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and with Greece and Cyprus on the other. This stance had been foreshadowed by the Prime Minister herself during her visit to Prague to meet Prime Minister Andrej Babiš at the end of September. In fact, according to sources who took part in the discussions, the bloc of eight countries fought hard during the European Council’s proceedings, focusing primarily on two fronts: postponing the entry into force of the so-called ‘ETS2’ system beyond the current target date of 2028, moving it to 2030. At the same time, they called for the introduction of a system to assess the impact the ETS has had on European industry to date. It is precisely this overt scepticism, however, that was opposed by the Nordic countries, whose diplomatic representatives attempted right up to the last minute to prevent the signing of a text that was excessively ‘watered down’ on this point. “Any weakening of the ETS would undermine the predictability on which investment decisions depend and would risk slowing the pace of industrial decarbonisation. It would also shift the burden of emissions reductions onto other sectors of the economy, where mitigation options are often more limited and politically more sensitive”, wrote Petteri Orpo, Prime Minister of Finland, Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark, and Ulf Kristersson, his Swedish counterpart, in a letter to European Council President Antonio Costa. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is convening the ‘Friends of Cohesion’ group to call for an ‘ambitious’ EU budget.

On the issue of Russian gas – another matter on which the Prime Minister has chosen to ‘take a stand’, explicitly referring to a ‘risky deal’ regarding the agreement between Trump and Putin – further turmoil was reported yesterday. The White House responded: ‘It’s a great deal’. But there are tensions within the ruling coalition too. The Deputy Minister for Infrastructure, Edoardo Rixi of the Lega, argued: “On the issue of diesel and gas, it is clear that either all European nations must give up diesel and Russian gas, but if Spain and Belgium are taking it, it is not clear why the others should have to give it up”. At that very moment, albeit indirectly, Fabio Rampelli, Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and a member of Fratelli d’Italia, responded: “Russian gas costs less to the Russians, not to us, because once imported, its price is set by the TTF. By buying it, however, we are certainly doing Putin a favour and helping him to finance the war against Ukraine and against Europe”. Still on the subject of gas, however, Meloni’s mission to Brussels is expected to conclude at least with the European Commission’s endorsement of the price cap for power stations, as part of the EU’s review of the ‘Bollette’ decree. This cap is expected to be set between 55 and 65 euros per megawatt-hour, to be financed (in part) through the European flexibility instrument, which will allow up to 14 billion to be spent on energy.