On Thursday 15 December, the European Council repeated the importance of putting the different strategies for developing the single sectoral markets into practice, with emphasis on completion of the Energy Union by 2018.
The EU acknowledged, however, that in the energy field, certain difficulties will need to be settled. In a footnote to the conclusions they adopted at the end of the summit, they admitted that “for Poland this also means being free to decide its own energy mix and guaranteeing the security of energy supply”. To the European Commission, the interventions made by several member states during the debate demonstrated the delegations are gradually discovering the scale of the clean energy package unveiled at the beginning of December (see EUROPE 11679).
In view of the March 2017 summit focusing on socio-economic issues, the European Council is calling on the European institutions to “raise the level of ambition in the areas of services and the single digital market”. It also emphasises that attention should, above all, focus on removing the barriers to the free flow of data.
The Commission is also being called on to assess the impact of industrial policy and examine opportunities for putting forward concrete action to strengthen and modernise the industrial base of the internal market.
Finally, the EU is calling for an agreement by the middle of 2017 for doubling the duration and capacity of the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), the financial arm of the “Junker Investment Plan” (see EUROPE 11683). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)