Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-507-000"
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"en.20110913.40.2-507-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, firstly, with this regulation, we are venturing into new territory. Therefore, I cannot say with certainty that all the provisions in the regulation will prove to be 100% practical in 10 years’ time. We are beginning now with a practical test. We believe that the measures we have proposed are correct and we will come back to you with progress reports from the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and from the Commission about whether and where improvements must be made, and whether the regulation should be revised, the instruments improved even further and the measures optimised.
The question of why a separate agency is needed has been asked. We have deliberately not proposed a separate agency. Instead, we have commissioned the agency which works together with the national regulators and which was established in March, ACER, to take on this additional responsibility, because there are many overlaps between ACER’s current activities and the new tasks. If ACER had not been given this task, it would have to have been carried out either solely by the national regulators, which would have meant that there would be no pooling of resources or harmonisation of sanctions and that other benefits would have been lost, or by the Commission working together with the Directorate-General. However, Directorates-General perform a management and monitoring function. They are not responsible for day-to-day administration.
Thirdly, like you, I am concerned about the following questions: What positions do we have to create in order to carry out the tasks effectively? What other resources do we need? What IT systems do we require? The agency will now take responsibility for this work. As soon as we know more about the workload, we will be happy to come back to Parliament and to ensure by means of restructuring or authorising the creation of new positions that the agency can cope with the amount of work in a few years and provide the required level of monitoring.
The question of the establishment of external bodies or liaison offices has been raised. We have currently told the agency and its boards, its director and supervisory bodies that it should decide how it is organised. I do not think that we should have an external body in the capital of every Member State. We will be happy to report at the next opportunity on whether these are needed and, if so, where. However, I am very reluctant to propose external bodies.
Mr Remek called the internal market into question, which is a reasonable thing to do. We can once again ask the question: has the internal market in electricity and gas been a sensible development in terms of competition and transparency? It was established 15 years ago by this Parliament. Europe is based on the fundamental principles of the market economy. Alongside the union for peace, the internal market, which has removed trade barriers and borders and allowed for competition and transparency, is a basic tenet of the European idea. There is an internal market for food, cars, white goods, brown goods and for products and services of every kind. The internal market and the trade agreements with third countries have, in principle, brought benefits for Europe. I believe that this means that the internal market is the right basis on which to do business.
Therefore, it is, in principle, also logical to subject not only coal and oil, which have been internal market products for several decades, but also electricity and gas to the rules of the internal market. In addition, if there were no internal market in electricity, but there was a European Union, we would now need a European electricity company. That would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Furthermore, it is only within the internal market that we can work towards our common goals for reducing CO
emissions and introducing renewable energy. Only in the internal market can we also achieve solidarity among the Member States.
This is not therefore a question of whether the internal market is right, because it is right. Instead, this is about ensuring that it is used correctly and not abused. For this reason, I believe that we have taken a decisive step today towards putting the internal market on a proper, trustworthy footing and, as far as possible, preventing market abuse and attacks on the internal market and on the benefits for market participants, in other words, insider knowledge, in the same way as has been done successfully in the case of other services in Europe.
I would like to thank you once again for your constructive comments and for your cooperation over the last six months. When you come to a conclusion tomorrow in Parliament, we will immediately implement the results of your decision."@en1
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