The “rules of the game” for energy prices need to be changed at the EU level, Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, has said.
Morawiecki and a team of cabinet officials took part in a Polish-Lithuanian inter-governmental meeting in Vilnius on Friday.
Speaking at a press conference following the bilateral discussions, the Polish prime minister said that Russia has caused an energy war across Europe.
“The whole of Europe is the subject of Russian energy blackmail,” he said. “We cannot pretend that there is no such blackmail, we have to change the rules of the game that were made for the time of peace.”
Referring to a European Commission proposal to limit the prices of electricity Morawiecki said he was “doing everything to ensure that new measures for this special time appeared at the EU level.”
He added that Poland had presented several proposals to the EU, including a reform of the bloc’s emission trading system (ETS), and changes to the price calculation mechanism in the EU, which in his opinion increases energy prices and allows energy companies to reap extraordinary profits.
Taxation on these extraordinary profits is another Polish proposal.
Morawiecki also said that “Poland is doing everything to alleviate the pain associated with rising energy prices, but joint European actions would be more effective”.
The prime minister also called for rapid action.
“This is a matter for the whole of Europe,” he said.