WRITTEN QUESTION No. 3047/98 by Dietrich ELCHLEPP to the Commission. Criticism of the German power supply law
Date: 1998-10-02
Institutions: ELCHLEPP, European Parliament
Subjects: Germany, State aid, control of State aid, electrical energy, electricity supply, energy production, international competition, renewable energy, single market, wind energy

C 142/76

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

21.5.1999

(1999/C 142/092)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3045/98

by José Apolinário (PSE) to the Commission

(8 October 1998)

Subject: Framework directive on noise

With regard to the preparation of a framework directive on noise, can the Commission tell me what its
guidelines are with regard to this (urgently required) possible initiative, and the timetable envisaged for its
taking concrete form?

Answer given by Mrs Bjerregaard on behalf of the Commission

(17 December 1998)

The Commission was able to announce at the conference on the Community future noise policy held in
Copenhagen on 7 September 1998 that it would prepare a draft directive on environmental noise as soon as
possible. The Commission is already working with groups of experts on environmental noise to provide
position papers that could form the basis of the technical content of the framework directive in question.
Results are expected in 1999.

(1999/C 142/093)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-3047/98

by Dietrich Elchlepp (PSE) to the Commission

(2 October 1998)

Subject: Criticism of the German power supply law

1.
Is it true that, in a letter to German Economic Affairs Minister Günter Rexrodt, EU Commissioner
Karel Van Miert has criticised the German rules on power supply remuneration for disrupting competition
in the EU?

Does the Commission realise that in making such a statement, it comes into conflict both with the EU
2.
Directive for the internal market in electricity and with its own strategy, set out in the White Paper on
renewable energy sources, of doubling the proportion of non-polluting sources − solar energy, wind,
hydroelectric power and biomass − by 2010?

3.
How does the Commission assess the statement that German supply remuneration arrangements
could disrupt competition among power producers and end the practise of passing on any additional costs
in a liberalised power market to customers, when the separation of supply and transport networks, on the
one hand, and power production, on the other, is the very hallmark of a liberalised power market?

4.
Does the Commission not know that the German power supply law amended in spring 1998 clearly
places the sale and remuneration obligation on network operators and that the latter can reflect the costs in
usage charges, so that competition between power producers is not disrupted in any way?

5. What objective grounds can the Commission give to support the claim that the statutory minimum
price for wind power in Germany − currently 16,79 Pfennig per kilowatt-hour − represents ‘over-
compensation’?

Does the Commission not know that a scientific measurement and evaluation programme carried out by
German Government departments calculated average costs to be 16,60 Pfennig/kWh and that over the next
few years, because of the link with average prices, supply remuneration in Germany will fall by 30 % to
14-15 Pfennig per kWh anyway?