Mr President, the gas and electricity market is, without doubt, essential both to Europe's competitiveness and to environmental protection. We have drafted a report in response to four Commission documents, the basic aim of which is to make one overall market out of fifteen individual markets. As rapporteur for the committee, I should like to draw the House's attention to a number of points, Mr President, but perhaps you will allow me to stop for a moment because Madam Vice-president has just joined us. I repeat, the basic aim of our report is to respond to four Commission documents and to make one overall gas and electricity market out of fifteen individual markets. The committee has identified a number of points here, which I should like to list. First, the Union citizens' right to freedom of establishment and freedom to provide services has so far only been partially implemented. We advise that this implementation be accelerated. Secondly, we welcome the fact that suppliers are forming new structures and we call on the Commission in its capacity as the competition authority, in collaboration with the national mergers and monopolies commissions, to ensure that new monopolies do not emerge, that new suppliers have free access to the grid, that exchanges are set up and that consumers can change their supplier. Thirdly, we are concerned about security of supply and consider that great care should be taken to ensure that the Member States which so wish can impose so-called public-service obligations on the competitors involved. The Treaty contains rules on transparency and clarity in this respect but it also allows the Member States to make their own decision here. We want to ensure that this remains the case. My fourth point concerns regulators. Most, although not all Member States have introduced regulators. We note that, in the countries in which regulators have been introduced, not only large consumers, but also medium-sized and small consumers can take better part in the market and the conditions for using the grid are clearer. Perhaps we need to reconsider if the negotiated network access model is the right approach, because it makes life easy for large consumers but difficult for medium-sized consumers and may be an instrument which hampers the European market as a whole. Fifthly, the grids are the central market place for the markets. We therefore need free access, and that means that tariffs must give the market the right signal of non-discriminatory access for everyone and – and this is the purpose of the so-called Florence process – good cross-border tariffs must be set which allow cross-border trade. A model has been worked out here whereby the costs of cross-border trade are paid into funds. The money is paid in by the national grid operators and paid out to those providing through lines. Commissioner, Madam Vice-president, I have two comments to make on this. First, we feel that the costs calculated by the grid operators appear to have been plucked out of thin air. We need to examine these costings closely in order to ensure that they are not completely out of line. Secondly, the costs included in the tariffs must be sure to give the market the right incentive, i.e. they must cover all losses and encourage investment. That is an important point in this process. Sixthly: not all cross-border services have the necessary capacity. This needs to be calculated and, if necessary, rectified or allocated in accordance with the markets, perhaps by auction. Then there are two more points which I should like to address. We hope to discuss with the Commission in committee exactly how imports of gas and electricity from the Central and Eastern European countries are to be dealt with, because we do not want to damage our own gas and electricity market in Europe by accepting different safety standards or the wrong competition terms. Finally, in the case of electricity, transmission system operators have formed an association and it was with the help of this association that results were achieved in Florence. We call on the Commission to use its influence and to take its own action to form a similar association for gas transmission system operators so that results similar to those achieved in Florence can be achieved in Madrid in the parallel process for the gas sector.

Political group: PPE-DE