Meloni and 18 other EU leaders: ‘Clear answers on energy costs’

Whilst awaiting the response from Ursula von der Leyen to the letter in which she requested further flexibility regarding inflation, Giorgia Meloni is seeking allies on the issues of energy costs and the reform of the ETS ahead of the European Council meeting on 14–15 October. She did so today, co-chairing the informal working group on competitiveness alongside Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Belgium’s Bart De Wever, and will do so again tomorrow at the Med9 summit, the group of nine EU Mediterranean countries, which the President of the European Commission herself will attend.

In addition to Italia, Germany and Belgium, sixteen other countries took part in the video conference on competitiveness: Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Hungary. Meloni emphasised the clear urgency of the situation: to work to ensure that the European summit in mid-October ‘provides clear and concrete policy guidance, in particular to reduce energy costs and safeguard the competitiveness of European industry’, as stated in a press release from Palazzo Chigi.

In this context, the Prime Minister reiterated and put forward a proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the ETS system, set out in six points developed in collaboration with the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš: measures range from using the Market Stability Reserve to prevent the ETS from exacerbating cost pressures on businesses to calls for greater protection for the most exposed industrial sectors, from ceramics to steel, cement and other energy-intensive sectors, by temporarily introducing further flexibility in the allocation of free allowances; from calls for ‘temporary measures’ to limit the pass-through of CO₂ costs to wholesale electricity prices to requests for temporary suspensions or flexibility regarding regulatory constraints that could exacerbate energy supply difficulties. But there is also a call to postpone the entry into force of both ETS2 (scheduled for 2028) and the European Methane Regulation, which is due to come into force on 1 January 2027: a new set of rules which, according to Paris and Berlin, could make it more difficult and costly to turn to alternative suppliers, with potential implications for the security and costs of Italy’s energy supplies.

The 19 countries issued a unanimous call: in light of the extremely challenging international context, to ‘eliminate or review all European obligations that are unnecessary, disproportionate or counterproductive’. All this is aimed at strengthening the EU’s ability to compete on global markets, ensuring fairer competitive conditions and better access to foreign markets for European businesses.

The topic will also be on the agenda of the Med9 meeting (Italia, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia and Croatia) scheduled for tomorrow in Split, Croatia, which will be divided into three sessions and will conclude with a final document. The first session will be devoted to an exchange of views on the new Multiannual Financial Framework for 2028–2034. Most of the leaders present agree on the need to safeguard Cohesion Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy – a point on which Meloni will emphasise – and have signed the ‘Friends of Cohesion’ letter, endorsed by 17 states last March and addressed to Brussels.