Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-17-Speech-2-278"
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"en.20080617.38.2-278"2
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"Mr President, I hope that if Parliament adopts the electricity report tomorrow, it will be an indication to energy companies all over Europe that we want the consumer back in the driving seat.
Now to the most controversial part of the report – the issue of unbundling. The clear thing is that the current system has not worked. There is a suspicion that some are not playing fair. They are giving priority access to their own company; they put obstacles in place which could stifle competition. That is why I believe, as rapporteur, that total separation of energy supply from transmission companies or full ownership unbundling – as was suggested initially by the Commission – should be the only option for electricity companies.
It is only in this way you will remove the conflict of interest. You can build as many Chinese walls as you want, but there will be no incentive for companies to encourage competition in the market if they also own transmission companies.
We need a level playing field: we need easier access for renewables and SMEs, but, probably more than anything else, we need a stable regulatory framework for the one trillion-worth of investment that is necessary in the EU market. If we fudge this issue now, we will not be giving a clear signal to those investors and the lights could go off in Europe. This issue will not go away and, if the lights go out, governments can fall.
So, who is resisting this? Germany, France, Austria, Luxembourg, Greece and Bulgaria: they think that strengthening these Chinese walls will be enough. Some suspect also that there is an effort to protect national champions who are happy to invest in other markets but are reluctant to allow others into their markets. We should not oversell the model however, we are not likely to see a reduction in prices under any model.
We know that the Council has come to an informal agreement on this issue. They have suggested the strengthening of these Chinese walls. Many of us, however, feel that this will not be enough for European consumers and have suggested sticking to a tough position.
I would like to thank the shadow rapporteurs in particular and everybody involved in this package for the cooperation on this very complex dossier.
Before talking about the most controversial aspect of this directive, I would like to dwell on some of the areas where we have managed to find a consensus within Parliament so far.
There cannot be anyone within the European Union who has not noticed the massive increase in energy prices in recent months. All over the European Union there are people struggling to pay their energy bills so we believe that the issue of ‘energy poverty’ should be placed firmly on the EU agenda. After all, the ETS system and the renewables targets are European and they impact on energy prices.
We have respected subsidiarity, Commissioner, in our request that Member States should come up with their own definitions of energy poverty and an action plan for dealing with the problem. So, if the Council want a deal on this package, they need to understand that this is a central requirement of Parliament.
Already many rights for consumers exist in the energy field but they are not enforced. So we have asked the national regulatory authorities to use incentives and sanctions to ensure the consumer is protected.
We have also listed additional rights which should be enjoyed by the consumer such as affordable prices for low-income families, an easier way to switch suppliers, increased representation for the consumer, especially when they have complaints, and a fair deal for people in rural and remote areas.
We believe there should be a roll-out of smart meters within 10 years, which should boost energy efficiency, and companies should be creative in the way they charge for energy and not reward people who use more as is currently the case. Priority access should be given to renewables to enter the grid so that we can reach that 20% target.
We have got to understand that when we talk about transmission systems we are talking about monopolies, so clearly there is a need for very strict regulation.
We would like to see much better cooperation between national regulatory authorities and competition authorities. In this way, we might get to a point where we do not have almost half of the countries in the EU where one company dominates over 70% of the market."@en1
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