On Tuesday 18 March, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the own-initiative report on electricity networks, Anna Stürgkh (Renew Europe, Austrian), presented the first version of the text to the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). It met with the general approval of the various political groups.
The European Parliament’s draft report therefore focuses on the less controversial subject of expanding and modernising electricity networks “as the backbone of the EU’s energy system”.
During the debate, Lukasz Kolinski, Director for Green Transition and Energy System Integration at the European Commission’s DG ENER, welcomed the fact that the draft report was based on the Commission’s action plan for electricity networks and was already aligned with “the envisaged scope of the next European network package”, recently announced (see EUROPE 13588/3).
During this exchange, all the shadow rapporteurs agreed that the draft text formed “a good basis for discussions”, which only required a few adjustments (see EUROPE 13591/9).
Dario Tamburrano (The Left, Italian) called for greater emphasis to be placed on the resilience of physical infrastructure to extreme weather events such as heat waves and flooding.
Seán Kelly (EPP, Irish) and Barry Andrews (Renew Europe, Irish) called for cooperation with third countries, in particular the UK, to be included in the text, in particular to take advantage of North Sea interconnections in the European grid.
A number of them, such as Ondřej Krutílek (ECR, Czech), have also insisted on the need to speed up the granting of permits and the connection of projects to the grid.
In an intervention on request, Thomas Pellerin-Carlin (S&D, French) called for more Europe-wide standardisation of network components, such as transformers, and suggested that the EU use equity to invest in networks so that it becomes not only a regulator, but also a shareholder in transmission system operators (TSOs).
With regard to financing, the majority stressed the need to strengthen the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’ (EFC). The rapporteur also stressed the importance of reviewing the TEN-E (Trans-European Networks for Energy) regulation, and insisted on greater recognition of the key role of distribution network operators (DSOs) in achieving the EU’s objectives. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)