Economy minister Franz Fayot and energy minister Claude Turmes have sent a letter to Margrethe Vestager, European commissioner for competition, and Kadri Simson, the commissioner for energy, asking for exceptional aid for companies that are particularly exposed to rising gas and electricity prices.

While the Luxembourg government can help households cope with rising energy prices by, increasing the cost-of-living allowance, it cannot directly (or indirectly) help businesses, which are suffering from rising energy bills, without contravening EU competition rules. The Luxembourg ministers have turned to the European Commission to ask for a relaxation of the rules or at least to allow member states to act in favour of their companies.

Gazprom singled out

Luxembourg says it does not want to be seen as undermining the “level playing field” principle by directly providing aid to companies and has asked the Commission to take up the matter in order to put in place a ‘community approach’ and in order to avoid member states having to take aggressive initiatives to save the industry.

Fayot and Turmes believe that Russian gas producer and supplier Gazprom has played a part in the current rise in gas prices. “As far as gas prices are concerned, even if the price of LNG also impacts Asian economies, it remains unaffected by the special increase induced by the new behaviour of Gazprom, which, by opting for a strategy that seems to be more geographical than commercial, has pushed the price of gas in the European Union higher than the impact of the world markets alone," the two ministers stated in a joint letter addressed to the commissioners Vestager and Simson.

On Wednesday, the rising energy prices will be debated in parliament.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.