Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-02-Speech-1-109"
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"en.20090202.16.1-109"2
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"Madam President, I would like to start by congratulating the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the rapporteur Mrs Laperrouze. They worked very hard to prepare this report on security of supply as early as this February plenary in 2009. When she started work, no one could have expected that we would have full gas supply from Russia via Ukraine, and this definitely draws more attention to the issues of security of supply.
I shall end with one particular proposal that the Commission elaborated, very much related to this issue, but also to the general economic crisis that we face. It is the part of the recovery package related to energy.
There are three issues on which we are proposing that the funding be used. EUR 3.5 billion is for infrastructure – it is not to support each and every project but to increase the diversification of gas flow from south, west, and east, and to try to get a balanced and sustainable gas supply mix.
On electricity, looking at the weakest points, these are the isolation of Baltic countries and the Iberian Peninsula.
Then there are two issues that are sometimes seen as a luxury, but in my opinion they are extremely important issues: offshore wind – it is crucial that we have public support for the projects that are ongoing – and carbon capture and storage. These are absolutely necessary in achieving our climate change objectives globally, but will also give a much-needed boost for European industry to develop the technology that could be used in the future.
So we are looking at combined security of supply, technology objectives and also European recovery objectives. I believe this is the right proposal. The volume of funds is not huge, but I believe they are going in the right direction and the public should be involved to strengthen security of supply in the European Union.
Concerning the gas crisis, what is the current state of play? All the volumes nominated are reaching their destinations, so this means that most of the consumers have full supply of gas. There is still one stream missing in Poland; we are working on it. It is exceptional in that it was supplied by RosUkrEnergo, which is now out of the deal, but we are also working towards full restoration of gas supplies to all parts of the European Union that have been affected by the crisis.
As the supply agreement is for 10 years, we can expect this agreement to provide a good basis so that we do not see this type of situation in the future. I would also emphasise, though, that all the EU monitors are still in place following the flows of gas and we expect that there will be no need for them in the future. I have written to my colleagues in Russia and Ukraine asking how we should proceed with monitoring in the future, because in my opinion, if we trust the deal and if it is stable, then no monitoring is needed now; however, the monitors are currently there.
I believe that we should not remain idle on this transit issue. We should continue to work with both sides – with the supply side, Russia, and with Ukraine as a transit country – and we should really ensure that there is separation between the gas supply to Ukraine and transit flows going to the European Union, and that these transit flows are financially beneficial for Ukraine too, bringing profit to the country and giving it much-needed economic benefits. We will continue to work on this issue, but basically we can say that the gas crisis is over.
What are the lessons to be learnt? I mentioned this the previous time, but the lessons are that the EU is more robust than we expected. It is true that in this difficult situation EU countries worked with one voice through the Presidency and support from the Commission. We have seen much evidence of solidarity when member countries helped other member countries. We also have the strong realisation that the internal market worked where it could work. I was also very pleased about the strong and coordinated response from the European gas industry, first of all demonstrating a common position vis-à-vis Gazprom, but secondly also in creating a common proposal that could be useful in case there is no permanent agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
What were the weaknesses we discovered? The first was the lack of infrastructure. That was quite obvious, and that was also partly why the market could not work. The gas price and the spot market have not increased particularly but this is just because in some parts of the European Union where the gas supply was needed most there was no additional possibility to deliver gas.´
There were some cases where solidarity could have been greater. We have also seen other cases where there was not sufficient transparency, and we definitely need a stronger coordination mechanism to address the crisis.
The Strategic Energy Review that was proposed by the Commission back in November addressed five areas where Mrs Laperrouze and the ITRE Committee go into more detail and streamline these. They are: energy efficiency; use of local resources (and I would like to mention that, for 2008, 43% of installed capacity comes from wind energy; it is the biggest capacity installed, and wind is a local energy); external relations, i.e. that we are working with our colleagues; crisis mechanisms; and infrastructure.
I believe that one important point where the Commission will make a lot of further effort is on the call in this report for the consolidation of activities in different areas, because we have really developed a lot of activities on the energy and climate change package implementation, on the technology, on external relations, on the internal market. But it is very important to see how to consolidate these, and what additional steps if necessary we should take."@en1
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