(2004/C 78 E/0196)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2924/03

by Salvador Garriga Polledo (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(6 October 2003)

Subject:   European Council to guarantee energy supplies

Summer 2003 will be remembered, inter alia, for the number of electricity black-outs which left various international communities deprived of the energy supplies, that public authorities should guarantee their citizens.

The fact that one of those communities was London, the capital of the UK, has led analysts to wonder whether the EU needs a European Consultative Council for guaranteeing energy supplies, in all forms, so that the distress occasioned by this summer's blackouts does not spread to other parts of the Community.

Does the Commission believe that it should set up a consultative council for secure energy supplies, with a view to protecting the whole EU from black-outs?

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(13 November 2003)

No electricity system can be 100 % immune from interruptions. Having said that, a repeat of the large number of incidents during 2003 on a regular basis would be unacceptable to European citizens.

Generally, the Commission believes that it is the task of Member States to ensure the continuity of electricity supplies. This applies both to generation adequacy (sufficient generation capacity to meet the consumption at any time) and to network adequacy (sufficient transmission and distribution network capacity to serve the loads at any time).

However, as the electricity transmission of the whole Europe is interconnected, there is a need for a close co-operation between the system operators. To this end, the Union of Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) at the request of the ‘Florence’ Electricity Regulation Forum, has initiated the work on the Operational Handbook which aims at binding security and reliability rules in the UCTE network.

This work serves mainly to consolidate existing agreements between system operators which have been in place for a number of years. The Commission, European regulators, the transmission system operator (TSOs) outside the UCTE area and other stakeholders have also participated in this work. The Regulation on cross-border trade of electricity provides for the possibility to include, in the guidelines on congestion management, common rules on minimum safety and operational standards for the use and operation of the network. It is the intention of the Commission that the future guidelines will include basic rules of this type in support of the development of the Handbook.

It is also considered important that the regulatory framework in place ensures adequate investments to the electricity generation and transmission infrastructure in medium and long term. The Commission intends to produce a Communication on this subject by the end of 2003, which will contain some specific proposals on this subject.