EU agrees on energy liberalisation

After having made a valuable contribution to solving the gas supplies crisis, the Czech EU Presidency today celebrated another success in the energy area. Coreper confirmed the compromise on liberalising the European energy market.

The Committee of Permanent Representatives discussed and confirmed the final agreement concerning all parts of the third energy package today in Brussels. By this step, the EU Member States accepted the compromise, negotiated since January by a team composed of representatives of the Czech Presidency, the European Parliament and the European Commission. The agreement concerns Directives on common rules for the internal market in electricity and gas, Regulations on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity and gas and the Regulation establishing an Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators.

“During intensive talks with the European Parliament we have managed to preserve a difficult compromise between the Member States concerning ownership unbundling. Each Member State will be able to opt for the approach that is best suited to its specific conditions. It’s the result of an excellent job,” says Czech Minister of Industry and Trade and President of the Energy Council Martin Říman.

The final version of the third energy package contains three equivalent options for the ownership separation of production and transmission activities of gas and electricity companies, on which the Member States have agreed earlier.

The first option implies strict ownership separation of energy production and the transmission system. The second option presumes the setting up of an independent system operator (ISO), to operate as an ownership unbundled operator securing energy transmission on another party’s assets.

The third option provides for legal separation of the transmission system and energy production by setting up an independent transmission operator (ITO).

The third energy package also extends the rights of the customers of energy companies. After the package has come into effect, the customers will have the right to change their energy and gas supplier free of charge within three weeks. The original supplier will be obliged to send them the final account within six weeks. Energy companies will also be obliged to provide their customers with all necessary data concerning their consumption and pay compensation if they fail to keep quality standards. Electricity distributors will also have to equip 80 % of their customers’ households with intelligent consumption meters by 2020. This measure is however conditioned by the positive outcome of an impact study.

The ITRE Committee will vote on the proposal on Tuesday 31 March. The voting in the EP plenary is scheduled after 21 April. The text will then be checked by lawyer-linguists and adopted at the next EU Council meeting. After being signed by the representatives of the EU Council and the European Parliament, the text will be published in the Official Journal.