Strasbourg, 25/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - By 540 to 70 with 30 abstentions, the European Parliament has approved the report by British Conservative Jonathan Evans on the EU's competition policy in 2003. While most Greens/EFA MEPs abstained, some Greens voted against the report, as did members of the United Left GUE-NGL and Independence and Democracy. The report welcomes the constant rigorous control of distortions of competition exercised by Mario Monti in his last year as Competition Commissioner, and the fundamental reorganisation of measures concerning cartels and dominant positions, and the services of the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission.
According to MEPs, the number of cases sent to and reversed by the Court of Justice should not sap confidence in the system as a whole. They encourage the Commission, however, to pursue its examination of the functioning of the legal system in order to improve access to justice. They state that the European Parliament should play a more proactive role through increased powers, although the European Commission does not refer to this. The Barroso Commission is urged to continue its work on impact assessments for private companies of the carbon trading system, quotas, authorisations, certificates and credits in the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. Likewise, the report wants to see proposals from the Commission on how to increase legal security, define good governance and help national and regional authorities to respect Articles 87 and 88 of the Treaty. When it comes to cartels and dominant market positions, the European Parliament is satisfied with the move towards greater focus on investigations and penalties. Concern is expressed, however, about lack of any significant reduction in the number of cases still pending in this domain, and more generally about the persistent failure to fully liberalise the gas and electricity markets.
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