Speaking to the media after the summit, Mateusz Morawiecki said that "we are currently dealing with an unprecedented price crisis" on energy markets.
“The excessive energy prices are translating into inflation, affecting ordinary people, Poles, Croats, Slovenians, all citizens across the EU,” he added, as quoted by Polish state news agency PAP.
“In such a moment, we couldn’t afford to adopt conclusions which would be essentially empty,” Morawiecki told reporters.
He said that "given the present circumstances," he had called for comprehensive reform of the EU’s CO2 emissions-trading system (ETS).
“The prices of CO2 emissions have risen three to four times over the past 12-14 months and tenfold in the last four years,” he told the media.
“A system like that isn’t working,” Morawiecki added, while also arguing that “various investors and profiteers were allowed to operate," making the ETS "very volatile."
“Poland doesn’t want ordinary people, Polish families, to suffer from such a sharp increase in energy prices,” Morawiecki also said.
“And so we made very firm, very unequivocal demands, while also showing that the European Commission must adopt friendly rules for the financing of gas-based and nuclear projects,” he added.
Morawiecki said he had proposed "a number of solutions," many of which “were well received during the discussions,” but ultimately the draft conclusions of the summit were “empty” and did not represent a response to the steep rise in energy prices, he told reporters.
“They weren’t something Poland could sign on to,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, European Council President Charles Michel told reporters that the issue of rising energy prices would be discussed again at the next summit of the European leaders, the PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP