WRITTEN QUESTION E-1167/02

by Rolf Berend (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(23 April 2002)

Subject: Internal market in electricity and natural gas

1. Is there a possibility that the Commission proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directives 96/92/EC(1) and 98/30/EC(2) concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity and natural gas (as it stands at present) could lead to variations in net utilisation prices between

(a) rural areas and conurbations and

(b) East and West Germany?

2. Would it be possible to extend the management of networks in separate companies, as called for by the European Parliament for many years in order to guarantee non-discriminatory network management, so as to allay any such concerns?

3. How does the Commission view the ownership unbundling of energy networks which the European Parliament has also called for?

4. Does it have any information on developments in overall electricity and gas prices in conurbations and rural areas?

(1) OJ L 27, 30.1.1997, p. 20.

(2) OJ L 204, 21.7.1998, p. 1.

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(14 June 2002)

1. The Directives to which the Honourable Member refers introduce competition in the electricity and gas sectors. Competition entails more efficiency and a better reflection of costs. Germany has chosen to open the electricity and gas markets fully to competition, meaning that all customers are in principle free to change their supplier if they find better prices, better service or a better product with another supplier than their traditional supplier offers.

In Germany, supply companies are free to modify their prices according to the customers in question. They can, in practice, offer different prices to customers with similar consumption pattern, be they industrial or domestic customers. The implementation of the Directives in Germany could thus lead to different prices for similar customers. This could be as a reaction of suppliers to a threat by customers to switch supplier or a reflection of higher or lower costs to supply particular customers. Price differences applied by different suppliers in Germany already exist, mainly as a result of differences in network costs for distribution between different areas and different system operators.

2. Under the current Electricity Directive (Directive 96/92/EC of the Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 1996 concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity), the management of networks needs to be carried out separately from other activities like generation and sales of electricity and separate accounts need to be maintained. In the gas sector the existing Directive limits the unbundling of the network operators to a separation of accounts.

Experience with the two Directives has shown that mere management and accounting unbundling cannot guarantee independent behaviour from the network operators. For this reason the Commission, responding to a call by the Parliament and the overwhelming majority of actors on these markets, proposes to implement a system of legal unbundling for the transmission and distribution system operators in both gas and electricity.

3. The Commission believes that legal unbundling coupled with measures of functional unbundling, as proposed, can be sufficient to achieve the objective of non-discriminatory network access. The Commission will review the effectiveness of this provision in a regular report.

4. The Commission has not studied the price developments in conurbations and rural areas. Eurostat publishes price comparisons for all major cities in the Union. This data is available on the website of Eurostat1. In its recent report on the implementation of the Electricity and Gas Directives, the Commission has published price comparisons and developments in the Member States(1).

(1) http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/en/elec_single_market/index_en.html.