Check against delivery!
Ladies and gentlemen,
Energy policy is one of the focal points of Germany’s EU Council Presidency.
As such, further developing the internal electricity and gas markets plays a key role.
Following the meeting of the Council of Energy Ministers in February and the summit of Heads of State and Government in mid-March 2007, a two-day conference begins today at the Conference Centre of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
The title of the conference is: “Completion of the Single European Market for Electricity and Gas – striking the balance between competition and energy security”.
We are expecting 150 participants, including the two EU Commissioners, Mr. Andris Piebalgs and Ms. Neelie Kroes, as well as Ministers, State Secretaries, high-ranking civil servants and regulatory authorities from all of the EU Member States.
The markets for electricity and gas are still light years away from working perfectly.
We need to ensure now that the Single European Market develops more dynamically.
Consumers have a right to receive the full benefits of liberalisation.
I expect the workshop to provide crucial impetus for the further consultations in Brussels and, in particular, to make an important contribution towards the conclusions the Council of Energy Ministers will have to draw on 8 June 2007.
Together with the Commission, the Member States need to develop a vision of what a perfect Internal Market should be like in the interest of consumers.
The broad outlines of the Commission’s ideas on this are on the table.
I hope the two Commissioners will be able tell us more specifically at the workshop what measures they recommend be taken to further develop the markets.
I consider the following issues to be paramount:
Firstly: network monopolies must function as neutral marketplaces.
All scope for discrimination must be eliminated.
Full ownership unbundling is certainly the simplest solution in this regard.
However, it has become evident in the discussion process so far that there is considerable opposition to this solution in some Member States.
We should therefore not be under any illusion that this solution can be implemented at European level in the short term.
For this reason, it was right for the last Council of Energy Ministers to call upon the Commission to also pave the way for alternatives that separate energy production from the supply and generation companies.
As such, I take it for granted that we must not lower our sights as regards the aim of achieving effective unbundling.
We need a concept that takes the different structures in the Member States adequately into account while paving the way for market convergence.
Secondly: full ownership unbundling is not a “panacea” for boosting the competitive momentum in the EU.
In fact, additional measures are needed. In the final analysis, what is needed is a package of measures that will lay the foundations for more competition.
Catchword: creating supplier diversity.
In order to strengthen supplier diversity, we need to have fair market entry conditions in all regions of the EU.
We need to create incentives for new suppliers to invest.
They are particularly dependent on fair market access otherwise there is no way they can compete with the dominant players in national markets.
I am therefore working on an ordinance on power plant connection at national level that will ease the way especially for new suppliers.
Catchword: enhancing cross-border power exchange.
Regulation 1228/2003/EC on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity is paving the way for more effective cross-border integration of trade in electricity and grid management.
TSOs, power exchanges and other market players are moving towards joint trading procedures and trading platforms.
All of this will enhance the cross-border functioning of the markets.
The Pentalateral Energy Forum involving the Benelux countries, France and Germany is an encouraging example of how this can work.
Thirdly: our efforts to create a perfect Internal Market will only be successful if we simultaneously pave the way for a future-oriented energy mix in the European Union.
We must not ignore the growing dependence on imports, particularly of natural gas.
The Internal Market means that a country’s security of energy supply depends more than ever before on the energy mix neighbouring countries decide to use.
Special attention needs to be paid to this when political decisions are taken on the composition of the energy mix.
Finding the right energy mix is also one of the keys to competitive energy pricing for industry.
We face the demanding task of bringing the vital interest that consumers have in being charged fair and competitive energy prices into line with the need to preserve stable and attractive investment conditions for the energy industry.
