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Polish PM calls for suspension of EU’s emissions trading scheme

Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, has said that for the sake of European energy security, the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) should be suspended and the European Commission’s price mechanism on the energy market should be reformed.

Talking at the Baltic Sea Energy Security Summit in Copenhagen on Tuesday, he said that energy security is Europe’s weak link and that “Poland has repeatedly spoken about the need to reform the ETS”.

“I think we should use all the instruments in our arsenal to oppose the goals that (Russian President Vladimir – PAP) Putin sets and wants to achieve,” Morawiecki told the meeting attended by his counterparts from Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Latvia, the Lithuanian president and EC president.

“One of them is the ETS, which should be suspended in its current form – for one or two years, simply to lower electricity prices for our citizens, but also for our businesses and enterprises,” he said.

“We can return to this system, but only when we provide energy for the whole of Europe and restore peace in Ukraine,” he added.

But Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission head, defended the EU’s ETS system saying that it helps limit CO2 emissions.

According to her it is Putin’s policy responsible for high gas prices, not the ETS system.

Morawiecki also said that the price mechanism used by the European Commission on the energy market “creates really high tensions… and it is very important that we change it.”

“I am convinced that Putin is laughing at us now, because we are not changing some price-shaping mechanisms in Europe… and these unchanged mechanisms only favour some actions of Russia,” he added.

Morawiecki believes that the merit order – the way of ranking available sources of energy, especially electrical generation, based on ascending order of price – should be modified so that “energy for enterprises and consumers is cheaper”.

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