The Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU intends to breathe new life into the inter-institutional negotiations underway on the three key legislative texts of the clean energy package (the revised directives on energy efficiency and renewable energies and the regulation on the energy/climate system of governance), at the informal meeting of the energy ministers in Sofia on Thursday 19 April.
So far, the trialogue talks between the member states, the European Parliament and the European Commission on these three texts have made little headway (see EUROPE 11992).
In two working sessions devoted to these three texts on Thursday, the ministers will attempt to change the position of the member states ahead of the forthcoming trialogue talks on 16 May on the energy efficiency text, 17 May for the renewables text and 26 April for the governance text.
The European Parliament reached its position on the three texts in question on 17 January, opting for two binding objectives of 35% up to 2030 for renewables and energy efficiency (see EUROPE 11941).
At the Council, the ministers have gone for indicative targets of 30% for energy efficiency and at least 27% for renewables at EU level (see EUROPE 11816, 11929).
Aside from these two targets, the Council and Parliament must reach compromises on other key political elements, such as the compulsory annual energy savings target under the energy efficiency directive and the objectives for the transport and heating/cooling sectors under the renewables directive.
Clean energy with a Balkans perspective will be front and centre at a high-level conference following the ministerial meeting, with two panel discussions on the instruments for a transition to a low-carbon economy and on regional energy cooperation.
Previously, a third session of ministerial discussions will be given over to the last of the four texts concerning the electricity market redesign and the draft revised regulation on the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), on which the Council still needs to agree on its position in order to move forward to trialogue negotiations.
On the first three of the four texts in question - the draft revised directive on common rules for the electricity market, the draft revised regulation on the electricity market and the draft regulation on risk preparedness in the electricity sector - the Council reached its negotiating position at the end of 2017 (see EUROPE 11907, 11928 and 11929).
For its part, the European Parliament adopted the draft mandates for its rapporteurs to negotiate with the Council on these four texts in committee on 21 February (see EUROPE 11966). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)