The EU Council reports that on 26 July EU member states reached a political agreement on a voluntary reduction of natural gas demand by 15% this winter in order to increase EU security of energy supply.
The Council's regulation foresees the possibility to trigger a ‘Union alert’ on the security of supply, in which case the gas demand reduction would become mandatory.
According to the Council, the purpose of the gas demand reduction is to "make savings ahead of winter in order to prepare for possible disruptions of gas supplies from Russia that is continuously using energy supplies as a weapon."
