Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-21-Speech-2-078"
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"en.20090421.17.2-078"2
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"− Madam President, I would like to start by sincerely thanking the rapporteurs, the shadow rapporteurs, Commissioner Piebalgs and Ambassador Reinišová for the excellent cooperation during the first three months of this year. That cooperation has been the main engine of the successful outcome we will be voting on this week. Negotiations have been long, complex and sometimes tough, but I think we have managed to get an agreement that is satisfactory to all parties.
Regarding the overall package, as it has been negotiated, Parliament can be proud of the final text. Indeed, our very strong first-reading agreement on ownership unbundling gave the negotiating team a lot of leverage during the talks. This has allowed us to obtain a much tighter regulatory framework, in particular in countries with the ITO model in place, where the competencies of national regulators will be increased, with independence from both governments and industry. This new role will reduce the risk of uncompetitive behaviour, especially in circumstances where vertically integrated companies abuse their position to stop investments in new capacity.
Furthermore, agreement has been reached on the review clause that will allow us to check, in a few years, whether all models satisfy our goals of achieving a fully competitive and legalised market. Moreover, we have substantially increased the provisions on consumer protection with regard to, among other things, billing information and improved conditions for switching suppliers.
Finally, another big success has been the introduction of a new provision in the third-country clause, whereby the certification of a transmission system operator (TSO) from a third country could now also be denied if the security of supply of the Union as a whole, or that of an individual Member State, other than the one where the certification is requested, is threatened.
Concerning the electricity regulation, I would like to make clear that this regulation plays a crucial role, since it gives Member States the tools needed to significantly increase interconnection capacity within the Union by the development and establishment of binding network codes to be applied by all transmission system operators to exchanges, thus removing one of the main physical barriers to the completion of the internal electricity market.
The agreed text also enhances the role of the Agency for the Cooperation of European Regulators in this process, in line with the first reading in the European Parliament. I must admit that Parliament hoped for a much more ambitious agency. However, we understand that this is only the first step in a long process of integration of regulatory frameworks.
We have managed to include a new provision whereby the Agency will be able to propose the basic criteria to be included in the granting of exemptions for new interconnections. This is particularly relevant since it is one of the main obstacles investors in new capacity face when dealing with different Member States. Having to follow several different regulatory procedures can sometimes lead to confusing results and put off investors – take, for example, Nabucco.
This regulation also establishes, and gives a defined role to, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO), which will be in charge of drafting the network codes to be submitted to the Agency, as well as developing coordinated mechanisms for emergency situations such as the European Union-wide blackouts we have suffered in the recent past.
I would like to finish by thanking all the technical staff, whose work has enabled us to obtain an agreement which, at the very beginning of the negotiations, we at times lost faith in reaching."@en1
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