ATHENS, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proposed a six-point plan to address the energy crisis in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a press release on Wednesday.
Noting that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has effectively overridden the natural mechanics of price formation in the gas wholesale market, Mitsotakis suggested that "a targeted and temporary market intervention" is necessary to alleviate the price problem.
The prime minister's plan includes a price cap, daily price guardrails, emergency price setting (as an emergency reaction only), gross profit margin caps in wholesale electricity markets, physical-delivery trading (a time-limited option to only allow trading with physical delivery), and increasing liquidity in the natural gas market by market coupling among the United States, the European Union (EU), and Asia.
In the mid-to-long term, the EU should reduce reliance on Russian natural gas, Mitsotakis added. ■