European Council, overnight deal on energy: Ets deadlock resolved

The European Council, meeting in Brussels, found overnight the agreement on energy that this morning seemed far off. After hours of tensions that had blocked part of the summit’s conclusions, the leaders of the Twenty-Seven reached an agreement on the energy dossier, the issue that had divided the room on Thursday.

What unblocked the impasse was a compromise on the Ets2 system, the European emissions allowance trading mechanism that had become the most contentious point of the negotiation. The Council decided to invite the European Commission to update the measure’s impact assessment: a procedural step that made it possible to overcome, at least for now, the standoff that had emerged in the preceding hours.

The clash had arisen from the proposal by the Visegrad group - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - backed by Italy and Greece, to water down the section of the final document devoted precisely to the Ets. This was a position that opposed that of other member states, more inclined to keep the measure’s framework unchanged, and that had led to the postponement of the text’s finalization, as reported by this newspaper in this morning’s edition.

European Council President Antonio Costa commented on the outcome of the negotiation, stating that the Union is working on a coordinated response to high energy prices, which weigh on households and businesses and undermine the bloc’s competitiveness. His words came at the end of a summit that ran longer than expected, precisely because of the divisions over the energy chapter.

The compromise reached overnight does not close the matter, but pushes it forward: the request for an updated impact assessment effectively postpones the final decision on Ets2 to a later moment, once the Commission has produced the new analysis requested by the leaders. It remains to be seen what the content of that assessment will be and whether it will manage to reconcile the distant positions that emerged during these hours - on one side the countries that, like Italy, were calling for an easing of the measure, on the other the states defending its original framework.

The Brussels summit also addressed, in parallel, the chapter on the Union’s multiannual budget for the 2028-2034 period, on which positions remain far more distant. President Costa will present a new negotiating document in the coming weeks, confirming the goal of reaching an agreement by the end of the year. The proposal currently on the table, put forward by the rotating Irish presidency, provides for an overall allocation of 1,620 billion euros, a figure lower than the 1,760 billion initially proposed by the European Commission. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made it known that he will oppose this reduction.

The European Council thus closes with a mixed result: an agreement found on energy after hours of deadlock, and a budget negotiation that reopens in the coming weeks with a new text yet to be written and with at least one member state, Spain, already opposed to the framework proposed by the Irish presidency.