"What can Europe do?" is a question that has been raised by farmers and fishermen across the continent, who have been put under unprecedented pressure from feed, fuel and fertiliser bills.
For fishermen, the EU will come up with an aid package this month which is expected to relax rules on state aids and offer help with marketing and promotion. However this seems little more than gestures.
The EU has no authority on taxation, and we are net importers of our main energy sources (be it coal or oil), so in effect prices are dictated by the world market and the 'OPEC' 13 main oil producing countries such as Kuwait and Iran.
However the European Union is not as powerless as it would seem. The fuel protests have brought into sharper focus the renewable energy debate and this is one area where the EU can make energy policy decisions to push down prices. The deflationary impact of biofuels on prices is often ignored, and as the European Union has proposed to replace 20% of its (otherwise fossil based) energy with renewable sources by 2020, there is a real opportunity to be seized by investors and producers.
Of course, biofuels are not the sole answer. The EU is piling resources into other renewable technologies such as solar and wind power in order to meet its target.
A final thought on the price debate: "The solution to high prices is high prices" was the philosophy of EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel during a debate last week, meaning that all things being equal, in response to high prices, producers should produce more.