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Heads of state are meeting through the night to finalise a coordinated response to gas-supply shocks. Follow our correspondents on the ground for rolling updates from the Justus Lipsius building.
Update · May 16, 2:12 PM
A revised draft of the summit conclusions has been circulated to delegations. The text endorses the joint purchasing platform in principle, defers the price-cap mechanism to a December technical meeting, and authorises a new €20 billion solidarity fund for the most exposed member states.
Update · May 16, 12:12 PM
After a forty-minute side meeting, the French and German delegations have signalled they are open to a dynamic ceiling on imported LNG, indexed to a basket of Asian benchmarks. Officials cautioned that crucial details on the trigger threshold remain unresolved.
Update · May 16, 10:12 AM
The leaders’ working dinner has begun behind closed doors in the fifth-floor dining room, with the Belgian presidency setting out a four-point agenda. The first item, according to a draft circulated earlier, is the proposed joint gas-buying platform.
— BRUSSELSEuropean Union leaders gathered in Brussels on Tuesday for an emergency summit on winter energy supply, the third such meeting in eighteen months and, in the words of one senior diplomat, "the one where excuses run out."
Heading into the talks, the bloc's twenty-seven heads of state and government remain divided over the design of a joint gas-purchasing platform, the price cap on imported liquefied natural gas, and the scope of any new transfers to the most exposed member states.
This page will be updated through the night with reporting from our correspondents inside the building and in the briefing rooms below.
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Public-sector workers, pensioners and university students filled the Plaza de Mayo in the largest demonstration since the government's emergency economic package took effect in March.
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About the author
Helena CrowtherChief International Correspondent
Helena Crowther has reported from more than seventy countries over a twenty-year career covering diplomacy, conflict and the Arctic. She joined The Global Mail in 2014 after a decade at the foreign desks of two major international newspapers, and now leads the paper's coverage of the High North and the G7.
MA, International Relations (King's College London). Recipient of the 2019 Foreign Press Association Award.