The four states that organized the initiative to promote natural gas limitincluding Greece filed one technical proposal for a “dynamic price corridor for gas”which aims to alleviate inflationary pressures, fight speculation, limit windfall profits for natural gas companies, and provide a framework for dealing with supply disruptions.

The “Dynamic Corridor” will apply to all wholesale transactions, without targeting imports of specific origins or specific natural gas uses. The technical proposal states that the ceiling must be high enough for the market to function. “This should act as a switch and discourage speculation. It is not intended to suppress prices to artificially low levels.

At the same time, the proposal says that flexibility should be maintained so that the EU can attract the necessary resources, as well as incentives to reduce energy consumption and switch from natural gas to renewable sources. The “corridor” should be supported by voluntary demand reduction and also applied to long-term gas contracts. According to the proposal, this would be preferable to waiting for a new milestone as it would take a long time. Recall that the Commission announced that it is working on the creation of a European index.

In addition, in the technical proposal of Greece, Italy, Poland and Belgium, some of the proposals recently submitted for discussion by the Commission are assessed as unfavorable. For example, it notes that limiting exclusively to Russian natural gas, which Ursula von der Leyen originally advocated, would have negative consequences for consumers and possibly security of supply, while at the same time creating market problems in terms of control over prices as some importers may find themselves in favorable conditions. . The text also states that the Commission’s proposal to limit the use of natural gas for electricity generation is unfavorable because it is not narrow enough to encourage low prices or demand and does not cover 2/3 of the natural gas market, i.e. industry and buildings.

The text of the technical proposal concludes by listing three scenarios that need to be taken into account when developing the corresponding proposal and which relate to the presence or absence of a shortage of natural gas. Based on the analysis of the four countries, Europe does not currently face a natural deficit, so a “dynamic corridor” could work with a central price that would be regularly reviewed to reflect external benchmarks such as crude oil, coal and/or natural gas prices in North America and Asia. Any fluctuations will occur around the central value. The central price will be a cap that can apply to one or more stages, such as TTF, or to all transactions.