Czechia, Austria and Slovakia urge EU action on electricity prices

Czechia, Austria and Slovakia want this week’s informal European Union summit to address high electricity prices and consider measures to bring them down. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Wednesday after meeting his Czech and Austrian counterparts, Andrej Babiš and Christian Stocker, in Bratislava.

The three leaders agreed on a joint declaration which, according to Fico, also includes issues related to the car industry. In their joint press conference, Babiš criticised the European Commission’s original plan to ban the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035, a proposal that was softened by the Commission in December. He also repeated that trading in EU emission allowances is affected by speculation.

The Czech Prime Minister added that another shared objective of the three countries is to win additional allies for the so-called “friends of competitiveness” group, with EU competitiveness expected to be one of the main topics at Thursday’s informal summit of EU leaders.

The Bratislava talks were preceded by a meeting between Babiš and Stocker in Vienna, as well as separate talks between Fico and Stocker in the Slovak capital.