Brussels, 01/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - During its weekly meeting on 7 July the European Commission may decide to begin infringement procedures against Member States that have not transposed into international law, the provisions from the directives on liberalisation of the gas and electricity markets. These directives plan for the opening up to competition of all these markets to all professional customers from 1 July. European businesses will now be able to freely choose their gas and electricity providers. This is till far from being the case.

Amador Sanchez Rico, spokesperson and Commission vice president for energy and transport, Loyola de Palacio, indicated on Thursday that only two Member States, the Netherlands and Slovenia had adopted legislative and regulatory provisions on all the obligations in the directive. Denmark and Hungary have done a little less well insofar as the laws and regulations that they adopted cover almost all but not quite all of the directive's obligations. Lithuania is expected to adopt the necessary legislative acts in July. With regard to other Member States Mr Sanchez Rico declared that the Commission expected that they transpose the directive completely into national law by the end of the year but recognised that only " a minority of countries will be able to complete the transposition process before 2005". Acknowledging that a large number of European counties had already opened up their markets to competition, the spokesperson, underlined, nevertheless, that it was necessary for the opening up to be carried out in accordance with the rules in the new directives, rules that took into account public service obligations, powers of the national regulator and environmental obligations.

Faced with this situation, which he described as worrying and unacceptable, Sanchez Rico announced that the Commission would be studying the situation and added that it could decide on 7 July to send a reasoned opinion to Member States that have not officially notified transposition of the directives.