Brussels, 05/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - Before putting forward his proposals for the energy union on 25 February, European Commission Vice-President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic will take part in a high level conference in a week's time, then in two ministerial meetings which fall within this mammoth project - which will take him from Riga, then on to Sofia and Baku.
Launch of Riga process. The energy union will be the focus of a high level conference in Riga on Friday 6 February, which is being organised by the Latvian Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers. Sefcovic will attend this conference along with European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete, government ministers, other representatives from the EU institutions and stakeholders in the energy sector. Latvia's minister for the economy, Dana Reizniece-Ozola, wants to use the conference to launch the Riga process, which will oversee the political discussions on the key elements of the project - supply security, solidarity and trust, completing the internal market, reducing energy demand, and decarbonising the economy.
Post-South Stream in South East Europe. Sefcovic and Canete will then travel to Sofia on 9 February, where they will take part in the first meeting of the working group on energy security in Central and South East Europe. The group was set up in December 2014 after the announcement that the Russian gas pipeline project, South Stream, was being abandoned. This meeting will also be attended by the energy ministers of nine EU member states - Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. The working group is expected to decide on a plan of action for strengthening cooperation, integrating gas markets and developing interconnections in the region. It is also expected to assess how to mobilise EU financing for this (the investment package, the Connecting Europe Facility, infrastructure projects of common interest, and the future strategic projects of the energy union). “We will launch a highly in-depth discussion on how to recreate the energy landscape in South East Europe because this region of the EU is still not integrated adequately into the European energy system and it has a great need of large infrastructure projects”, said Sefcovic on Wednesday 4 February.
Steering committee for Southern gas corridor. On 12 February, Sefcovic will travel to Baku, where a meeting of ministers from the transit countries in the Southern gas corridor will be held - Georgia, Turkey, Albania, Greece and Italy. The meeting will be held under the auspices of Azerbaijan, and it will also be attended by the consortiums concerned. These are the Shah Deniz consortium, which will exploit the Azeri gas field in the Caspian Sea; Tanap, which is responsible for constructing the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline through Georgia and Turkey; and TAP, which is responsible for constructing the Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline through Greece, Albania and Italy. “The aim of this meeting is to work on a sort of roadmap for the timetable of the worksites, for settling the issues that might come up and discussing the best solutions possible”, said Sefcovic. The aim continues to be for the Southern gas corridor to be operational by 2018-2019. (EH)