BRUSSELS, August 23. /TASS/. Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Energy Union Maros Sevcovic will hold gas talks in Moscow on September 11-12, an official with the EU told TASS.
According to the official, the European Commission can confirm that Vice-President of the EC Maros Sevcovic will come to Kiev on September 2 and will be in Moscow on September 11-12.
According to the official, these visits were planned a long time ago and the preparations for them began before the summer.
"The agenda of the visits includes meetings with relevant Energy Ministers. One of the goals is to explore interest of the parties in trilateral negotiations on the eve of the winter heating season 2016-2017 years, the representative of the EC said.
The regular trilateral consultations between Russia, the EU and Ukraine on gas deliveries to Ukraine and their transit to Europe began in May 2014 after Russia canceled the discount on gas for Ukraine.
In the summer of 2014, Gazprom began to supply gas to Ukraine on the base of prepayment.
In autumn of 2015, Russia managed to keep the provision of the "winter package" which allowed it to set gas price on quarterly basis.
At the same time Gazprom did not apply the "take or pay" principle during the winter season of 2015-2016, as it did earlier. That allowed Ukraine to avoid sanctions for insufficient gas offtake.
The "winter package" which gave Ukraine a discount for the first quarter 2016 in the amount of $17.77 of the price for one cubic meter, expired on March 31.
After that, the European Commission recommended to Kiev and Moscow to hold talks on natural gas supplies in the near future. Until now there has not been any specific date of the talks.
In addition, in late July, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said he plans to discuss implementation of the Nord Stream-2 project with Maros Sefcovic.