Brussels, 27/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy adopted the reports by Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg), Bernhard Rapkay (PES, Germany) and Peter Michael Mombaur (EPP-ED, Germany) on the liberalisation of the gas and electricity markets. According to the three rapporteurs, it also sent a clear signal to the European Council of Barcelona on the need to accelerate the market-opening process, while keeping to the timetable proposed by the European Commission.
Claude Turmes, rapporteur on the electricity issue, felt that the vote in committee strengthens the Commission's proposal on at least four points: 1) The parliamentary committee calls for the public service obligations of the directive for small consumers to be strengthened, as well as that in the field of the environment. 2) In order to give consumers a well-documented choice on each invoice, advertising or other promotional material produced by an electricity company should show the source of its energy (nuclear, coal, gas or renewable energies). Thus, consumers would have the possibility to choose the companies that produce electricity in a more environmentally friendly way. 3) The parliamentary committee calls for the role of the regulator to be strengthened in order to have the public service obligations respected, but also to ensure that the current trends towards domination by certain groups does not gain the upper hand. 4) The ban on using nuclear decommissioning funds would guarantee fairer competition between electricity companies. These funds, created to cover the costs of dismantling power stations, are substantial amounts and allow three companies that have access to them (EDF in France, EUR 60 billion; EON in Germany, EUR 11 billion; and RWE in Germany, EUR 9 billion), to enlarge while carrying out acquisitions of companies in the sector.
Bernard Rapkay, rapporteur for the "gas" section of the directive, pointed out for his part that the parliamentary committee had endorsed his approach, similar to that adopted for the "electricity" section by his colleague, Turmes. He stressed that the MEPs had found a compromise solution between regulated access and negotiated access to the gas networks. Mr Rapkay, moreover, felt it was necessary to "separate the two networks" (electricity and gas) and welcomed the fact that the parliamentary committee had agreed it was necessary to have two directives, one for gas and one for electricity, and not a single directive as recommended by the European Commission.
Peter Michael Mombaur, rapporteur for the proposal of regulation aimed at lifting the obstacles to cross-border trade of electricity and the increase of such trade, said that his group, the EPP-ED, unlike the Socialists and the Liberals, had not backed the Turmes/Rapkay report. He stressed that the number of "nos" and abstentions were greater than the number of "yes" votes, and specified that, for his group, some of the amendments by Mr Turmes were "unvotable" at second reading.