European Union leaders will ask the European Commission today to study the feasibility of tax measures to ease the pain of soaring oil prices and report back in October, a draft summit statement showed.
"The European Council invites the Commission to examine the feasibility of taxation measures to smooth the impact of sudden oil price increases and report before the October European Council (summit)," the draft said.
It underlined that distortionary fiscal and policy interventions should be avoided as they prevent necessary adjustment to higher energy prices by businesses and consumers.