“Speaking about this heating season, this winter season, Vladimir Putin has failed to somehow undermine self-confidence of the European Union’s countries and their ability to fill up storage facilities and get ready for the winter. However, once the winter ends, we will have to think about the upcoming season and the existence of the cap at that time will simply not allow speculation by market players who might want to use that situation to make superprofits,” she told reporters in the Seimas on Tuesday.
Simonyte agreed that the gas price cap was not a “market measure” but stressed that “there has been not much of a market” in the gas market in recent years.
“One large player has fully shifted its supplies away from the European market and seeks to manipulate that market, hence such measures are justified,” she noted.
The prime minister added that the gas price cap mechanism adopted on Monday was better than the one previously proposed by the European Commission.