Bruegel, the Brussels economic policy think tank, published a three-scenario refill model on Thursday 23 April: €26 billion at €45/MWh TTF, €35 billion at €60/MWh, and €44 billion at €75/MWh1. With TTF settling at €44.86/MWh on 25 April, the operative number is €26 billion, €9 billion below the figure that has anchored EU policy debate since update #288.
This matters because the €35 billion figure has been quoted in finance-minister letters and in the consumer-relief framing of the Commission's AccelerateEU package, which was published on 22 April with no storage injection mechanism. At today's TTF print, AccelerateEU's gap looks smaller than its critics costed it; desks short summer and long winter against an €60/MWh case have been pricing roughly €9 billion of phantom buyer demand.
Bruegel itself stops short of endorsing the package. The same paper recommends against price caps, windfall instruments, and ETS (the EU Emissions Trading System, the bloc's carbon market) weakening, and flags Spain's drop in gas-price-setting hours from 75% in 2019 to 15% in 2026 as evidence that demand-side adjustment is doing the work caps would distort. Bruegel also notes Qatar supplies only 4% of total EU gas imports and 8% of LNG imports, lower than commonly cited; US LNG carries two-thirds of EU LNG flow.
Spain's drop from 75% to 15% gas-set hours is what Bruegel uses to argue the policy position. When fewer than one in six Iberian power-market clearing intervals are set by gas, the marginal price-formation mechanism for EU electricity has migrated towards renewables and storage. A price cap on gas in 2026 hits a smaller fraction of European power-market hours than it would have in 2022. The €26 billion case sits inside that picture; the €35 billion case requires either a Hammerfest LNG overrun beyond 10 July or a renewed Hormuz escalation to land.
