The European Union must approve a gas price cap amid Russia’s war on Ukraine “before it is too late, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said Monday.
“The EU must approve the price cap on gas as soon as possible, before it is too late,” he said on the sidelines of an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “That is, before prices go out of control and impact even more families and businesses”. Italy is one of the EU countries that gets the most gas from Moscow, around 40% of its total supplies, although it has been scrambling to set up alternatives with countries like Algeria, Angola, Congo, Libya, Egypt and Mozambique.
Di Maio said Italy was going into the FMs’ meet “with three priorities: arriving at peace in Ukraine, setting a gas price cap, and food security”. He also said Italy would not veto the EU’s upcoming sixth package of sanctions on the Russian Federation for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “Italy will not put a veto on it, we want to approve the sixth sanctions package as soon as possible because sanctions are the only peaceful way at our disposal to bring (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to the diplomatic table,” said the Italian foreign minister. “It is clear that EU rules must be reformed, superseding the principle of unanimity, because a single country, in this case Hungary, should not be able to block the decisions”. A recession is “certain” in Italy if the flow of Russian gas into the country is stopped due to the Ukraine war, the CEO of Italy’s biggest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, Carlo Messina, said Monday.
