Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-067"
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"en.20020312.4.2-067"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to thank the rapporteurs very much for all of their preparatory work. In my opinion, the debate or discussion about these directives and regulations has been a good example of how together we can get to grips with a complicated issue at least enough to know where we concur and where our views differ.
Incidentally, I should like to recall that at the end of the eighties, when the Commission published its White Paper on the internal market, energy was not even mentioned, which shows that we are dealing with an extremely complicated matter here. At the time there were many who said, hands off, that is far too complicated, we in the electricity and gas industry understand this much better, let us deal with it. We chose another route and I believe that competition is indeed the right way forward. I am also in favour of our establishing unrestricted competition. Incidentally, if we did not do this, in the end the European Court of Justice would probably force us to change the way we do certain things, for example to recognise that the customer is the domestic customer and not a customer defined by us. You see the Treaty always carries more weight than any Parliament resolution.
I should, however, also like to advocate that we not only deregulate, but also regulate. What we are doing here is actually regulated deregulation, if I am allowed to say that. But that is precisely what it is. We are not only opening up the market in gas and electricity, we are also setting the conditions – the environmental and social conditions – under which this will take place, or we are leaving it up to the Member States to do so by enacting their own regulations. I believe that these are two sides of the same coin. This is perhaps where we differ, Mr van Velzen, in our assessment of these directives. Neither do I regard this as complicating the process; I think it is part of it. We need a market and we need regulated competition, but energy is also something to which the public has a right. Security of supply must be established and the environmental conditions must be set. This is an integral part of this directive.
The opening up of the energy markets is also a fundamental prerequisite for the functioning of the Kyoto Protocol. Without competition and without an open market, we will not be able to have emissions trading in Europe. This is part of the Kyoto Protocol, which, after all, almost all of us wish to ratify."@en1
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