Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-24-Speech-4-030"
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"en.20021024.3.4-030"2
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"Mr President, my sincere thanks go to my colleague, Mr Beysen, for the work he has done. He took the views of the shadow rapporteurs into consideration back in the formulation stage in an exemplary manner and the levels of cooperation we have seen have been fruitful.
We must take account of the fact that in rather more than a year’s time there will be 10 new Member States in the European Union. Their concerns are also our concerns. The candidate countries must be included in programmes like the TEN-Energy programme as swiftly as possible. All candidate countries have huge problems with regard to their electricity transmission networks. In the Baltic countries there are no such networks as such. If and when Ignalina is closed, and whatever decisions are made concerning bituminous shale, the Baltic countries’ energy strategies cannot rely exclusively on Russia. What sort of timetable does the Commission have for including the new Member States in the trans-European networks?
I have given emphasis to the question of whether the EU should support the private sector. The basic philosophy here is that the energy sector must be one in which the market economy works unaided. Only in exceptional cases can public sector aid be granted to the private sector. The Commission’s contribution, which in the end is the European taxpayer’s money, must not be raised from 10% to 20%. Previously, aid was available only for studies in the planning stage. If the Commission’s new proposal is accepted, aid would also be granted for project development.
There is always the risk that project coordinators will increase their costs just to obtain as much aid from the Commission as possible.
It is good that the Commission will provide support for building trans-European networks. This programme and this amount of money, however, will have only a limited effect, and will not solve the problems of Europe’s energy infrastructure. The solution to the problem of bottlenecks is to be found in the Member States rather than in this EU programme. There have been a lot of problems when constructing power lines as a result of the way in which decisions have been made at local and regional level. Residents complain about electromagnetic radiation, the impact on the environment, blighted landscapes, and so on. It is for this reason that no solution has been found for the largest bottleneck in the European electricity networks, which is on the border between Spain and France.
Matters relating to technology must not be linked to this programme. We are now deciding on trans-European networks, without adopting a position on what technology is to be used in producing the energy transmitted through the network and what its source is. The supplementary role renewable energy sources play in basic production is a part of the European energy palette. In certain circumstances they serve as excellent local solutions. This report is about infrastructure, not energy production. The network and production must be kept separate.
As a separate issue I want to mention Amendment No 9. If this is meant to suggest that renewable energy sources will result in lower charges for the consumer, that is not true. All the research shows that nuclear power is the cheapest option for the consumer of all forms of energy.
The Commission is proposing an electricity interconnection capacity of at least 10% as a European minimum level. The level of interconnection is already 20% in some countries, however. The Commission should set its targets higher and insist on a level of 20% for all Member States."@en1
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