Brussels, 05/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - When adopting a report on Thursday 4 February by Adina-Ioana Valean (ALDE, Romania) on a draft EU regulation on the notification of investment in the energy industry unveiled by the European Commission in July 2009 (see EUROPE 9944), the European Parliament's energy committee, chaired by Herbert Reul (EPP, Germany), made two urgent demands, namely for greater confidentiality of information supplied by energy companies, and for the new regulation to comply with Article 194 of the Treaty of the EU - in other words for it to be decided upon through the co-decision procedure by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. In the initial draft, the Commission only gave the EP the role of advisor because the regulation is about the collection of statistics. The member states' representatives held their first discussion of the draft legislation at the Energy Council on 7 December 2009, where they made it clear they wanted to water down the regulation (that allows the Commission to expand the collection and analysis of statistics about investment projects in the EU for oil, gas, electricity and nuclear energy infrastructure, see EUROPE 10037). EU electricity companies, under their umbrella group Eurelectric, issued a document on 3 February (see http://www.eurlectric.org ) supporting the idea of greater transparency but calling for the provision of legally required information not to be made into a new burden for electricity companies. (E.H./transl.fl)