Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-16-Speech-2-472"
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"en.20081216.43.2-472"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I can assure you that we have no intention of shirking our responsibilities, in fact quite the contrary.
The Council has on several occasions, including during this six-month period, underlined the great importance that it places on creating an internal market in electricity and gas, ensuring a transparent and clear regulatory framework for investments in and operation of transmission networks, and reinforcing the role of regulatory authorities and their cooperation. This importance should again be underlined at this time when, hopefully, the climate and energy package will be adopted, all the more so as completing this internal market is a prerequisite for achieving our objectives in this area.
The importance placed by the French Presidency on the successful conclusion of this package, which is a fundamental element of European energy policy, cannot therefore be called into question. Neither can the importance placed on meeting the agreed deadline, in other words reaching agreement before the end of the legislative term. It therefore made every effort to achieve political agreement on all five texts during the Council meeting on 10 October.
I must remind you that, despite the excellent and comprehensive work of the Slovenian Presidency, two essential issues were left open in the texts, which took the form of a general approach, due to the lack of an opinion from Parliament during the Council meeting on 6 June. These issues were investments of third countries in the energy sector and conditions of fair competition. Every effort was made and we managed to ensure that a unanimous agreement was reached during the October Council meeting. I would point out that the Commission very much supported the terms of the October common position.
On the day after this agreement, the French Presidency engaged the services of the Council’s General Secretariat to carry out the technical and legal work needed to finalise the 300 pages of legislation in this package, so that the common positions could be forwarded to Parliament in December. The prompt conclusion of this work is dependent on both the services of Parliament and also those of all Member States.
In line with the indication given by the secretariat of the committee responsible for coordinating the work of the institutions, and in agreement with the future Czech Presidency, it was decided that this common position would be forwarded to Parliament in the coming days, at the beginning of January. As far as the Council is concerned, it intends to conclude the procedures for this adoption on 9 January. I do not need to remind you that we have been negotiating a number of packages at the same time, including the one that we have talked about today and the one on maritime transport which has really fired up all the respective negotiators.
Despite the physical impossibility of starting negotiations on that package, in a letter of 17 November sent to the President of Coreper and to the chairman of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, the French Presidency indicated its availability to attend an initial meeting in the form of a trialogue, as you asked, in order to begin some initial exchanges. The conditions have now been met so that we can devote ourselves fully to examining this package and hopefully reaching agreement at second reading, by next May. This, in any event, is what the French Presidency hopes."@en1
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