Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-04-06-Speech-3-522-000"
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"en.20110406.32.3-522-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this debate has been most instructive. Thank you very much, I have been following it with keen attention.
The Hungarian Presidency began this half-year with great ambitions in the area of energy policy. One ambition we did not have was to settle the issue of the energy mix. I believe that today’s debate, too, has shown that this would not be a realistic goal. A multitude of arguments have been made for and against having some form of guidance regarding the energy mix in the European Union. I believe that we will not be able to settle this within the foreseeable future, but I am not sure if that is a problem; as such, the Member States must be able to make responsible decisions regarding their own energy mix.
We did, however, have ambitions to make significant progress in the creation of a common energy market. The European Council of 4 February 2011 set this as its objective, as well as the elimination of energy islands within the European Union by 2015, and subsequently, at the Energy Council at the end of February, we were also able to adopt conclusions, which I believe is a major step forward.
To our knowledge, the Commission will publish the Energy Roadmap 2050 in November. The energy ministers, however, will already hold a preliminary debate on this subject and the related goals at the informal Energy Council on 2 and 3 May in Budapest, and the Presidency will prepare a report and a political summary of this, which will be on the agenda of the formal Energy Council meeting in June.
I am certain that these questions, which have been raised now in this hall, will also come up during the Council debates, and I also trust that once the Hungarian Presidency summarises that debate, the Commission will be able to build upon it when finalising the Energy Roadmap it will publish in November. However, the fact that the Member States have a maximum commitment to both the issue of nuclear energy safety and having a common European framework is best demonstrated by the conclusions of the European Council of 24 to 25 March. These conclusions stress that we must draw lessons from the disaster in Japan, and that we must review the safety condition of the EU’s nuclear power plants and conduct the stress tests. ENSREG and the Commission have been requested to do so as soon as possible, and to make a proposal regarding the competence and modalities of these, so that a general assessment can be prepared subsequently and published by the Commission on the basis of the assessments of these independent authorities. Finally, the European Council itself will also address the topic again at the last European Council meeting of 2011.
The Heads of State or Government also stressed that nuclear safety must not be limited to the territory of the European Union, and that we will also ask our neighbours to take these stress tests. They also stated that the highest possible standards are needed in the area of nuclear safety, and that the European Council has set out serious tasks for the Commission, which – as I am certain, and as the Commissioner has also mentioned – it will carry out with the utmost commitment.
And so, as intense as today’s debate may have been, there have been common points on which, I believe, we are all in agreement: there should be a common European framework, we should do everything at every level to ensure the highest possible level of safety, and we should do all this in a transparent manner, ensuring maximum publicity. The Council is ready to cooperate with both the European Council and the European Parliament along these principles."@en1
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