BRUSSELS. Jan 10 (Interfax) - The joint working group of the European Commission and Slovakia on gas supply, whose creation has recently been announced, will study the consequences of the halt of Ukrainian transit of gas from Russia, European Commission Spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said.
"It will be the main task of the high-level group to identify, to clarify the economic impact and finding the common understanding of the situation," she told a briefing in Brussels on Friday.
The working group will work on the technical side of the matter; the European Commission services are already working on the formation of this group, Itkonen said. "The group will include senior officials from the [European] Commission and Slovakia," she said.
The first session is expected in the coming weeks, she said.
Responding to a question as to whether financial compensation for Slovakia's loses from the transit halt is envisaged, Itkonen said that such compensation is one of the issues that will be discussed. "And we will see, how the EU can help," she said.
The European Commission is "continuously in a very close contact with Ukraine both at political level [...] and technical level," Itkonen said.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Dan Jorgensen, a member of the European Commission's department responsible for energy policy, announced on Thursday an agreement to create a working group on the issue of gas supplies to this country after the expiration of the agreement on gas transit from Russia via Ukraine on December 31, 2024.
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