Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-328"
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"en.20060517.22.3-328"2
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".
Mr President, I am not sure I have ever enjoyed such largesse of time before in this House, but I am glad it is in the company of a select club!
The final point – by what means and by whom will Parliament be informed
of the position taken by the Commission within the various organs of the Energy Community Treaty – has been answered in general terms in the Commissioner’s letter. However, I invite him to share any further thoughts he may have with Parliament on detailed implementation of these undertakings.
Finally, I come to the crux of the matter: whether Parliament should vote for the recommendation. Let me say that I recognise the good intention of the Commission in offering to brief my committee about the work undertaken in the preparation and negotiation of this Treaty, although our reaction might have been more welcoming and less suspicious of what was being proposed had it not come out of the blue without any prior knowledge on our part.
I also recognise and appreciate the Commission’s efforts to persuade the Council to take this Treaty down the assent procedure route instead of, as it were, slipping it through on the nod. However, I am bound to observe that this was after we began raising questions about possible empire-building by the Commission.
This Treaty could provide an important message to the countries of south-east Europe, and even beyond, that the EU is capable of being outward-looking and wants to embrace them in the family of European nations. I am not entirely sure how much comfort Bulgaria will derive from this, given the earlier decision to force early closure of Kozloduy – a decision which no longer has any technical justification in my view, but maybe this Treaty could help offset that negative message.
I close by expressing the hope that the Council in particular will be able to give us sufficient comfort this evening so that we can proceed to a favourable vote tomorrow.
I wish to begin by expanding on the objects of our two questions to the Council and to the Commission. I should emphasise that they are
questions – although it is gratifying to see my name on them, the questions are on behalf of my committee.
I am very pleased to see that the Presidency is able to be present after all. I appreciate that this may have caused inconvenience, but holding this debate at this time presents some inconvenience to me as well: I could be elsewhere consuming asparagus.
Because the Council has changed the original Commission proposal with regard to the role of the European Parliament from the consultation procedure to simply informing Parliament of any decision of the Council, I am bound to ask why the Council appears to be trying to bypass or circumvent Parliament. What could the Council have to hide? In the context of the apparent reluctance to be present here tonight, the substance of our question has added relevance. Therefore, allow me to remind the Council representative, Mr Winkler, of our two specific questions.
The first is: what mechanism would the Council envisage for
informing of Parliament prior to the adoption of a position by the Council with regard to the Energy Community Treaty institutions? Secondly, by what means and by whom will Parliament be informed
of the position taken by the representatives of the European Community in the organs of the Energy Community Treaty, such as the Permanent High Level Group? Before the House is invited to vote on the recommendation on the Energy Community Treaty tomorrow, we need some answers and assurances from the Council on these points, and I and others will be listening carefully.
Because this is a very important matter, the proposed Treaty creates an interesting precedent in extending the
in a limited and very specific field to third countries, albeit that two of them should be joining the European Union very shortly or others are in various stages of negotiating accession.
It is also important because energy is currently perceived as a very important issue, largely as a result of events at the beginning of this year. Those events were rather like throwing a large stone into a pond, creating ripples. Energy is vital to our way of life, vital to our quality of life and vital to our standard of living, so how we organise markets and safeguard security of supply is equally important.
Turning to the question to the Commission, I should like to acknowledge from the outset the high level of cooperation and the positive response to our concerns that we have received from Commissioner Piebalgs. Indeed, I welcome his open and constructive approach in meetings and in the recent letter with regard to the issues of informing Parliament about the activities of the Energy Community and addressing some of the concerns of my committee over social and human rights issues. I trust that the Council will endorse his offer to inform Parliament in advance of the European Community position to be taken before the institutions of the Energy Community on important issues. I welcome his letter’s assertion that he considers it of the utmost importance that Parliament is fully informed in advance of important decisions to be adopted by the Energy Community.
Now I come to the specific points contained in our questions to the Commission, which I feel still require a response. The Council decision on the conclusion of the Energy Community Treaty lays down in its Article 4(3) the provisions for providing ‘mutual assistance in the event of disruption’ – see the Treaty’s Title IV, Chapter IV. Yet the same article of the decision stipulates that: ‘in the event of special circumstances’ the position of the European Community ‘may go beyond the
’. So the first question is: what might these special circumstances be? The second question is: what is meant by the phrase, it ‘may go beyond the
’? I ask the Commissioner to put some flesh on those two issues for us."@en1
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"rapporteur and author"1
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