Commission wants more EU control in energy deals

Commission to review deals with third countries, while Poland pushes for more energy transparency.

The European Commission, as part of its efforts to create a common external energy policy for the EU, wants member states to share information about energy deals with foreign suppliers. 

Announcing a proposal to boost the co-ordination of external energy policy yesterday (7 September), Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for energy, said that the EU should extend beyond its borders the achievements of its large internal energy market “to ensure the security of energy supplies to Europe and foster international energy partnerships”.

“When you see that 60% of natural gas is imported and 80% of oil is imported, the success of any energy policy is dependent on a successful external policy,” he said.

Oettinger is proposing a greater role for the Commission in assessing energy deals. He wants the Commission to review all oil and gas supply deals that member states reach with other countries to see whether they are in line with EU law and the EU’s security-of-supply aims. Oettinger said this would include agreements that are currently under negotiation.

The plan also suggests that the Commission negotiate energy accords with countries such as Libya, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on behalf of the entire EU. “This is the right way to go,” the commissioner said.

Information exchange

Oettinger has proposed the creation of a mandatory information exchange mechanism on energy issues, to avoid conflicts between member states over supply agreements such as the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which brings Russian gas to western Europe under the Baltic Sea.

In April 2006, Radoslaw Sikorski, then Poland’s defence minister, now its foreign minister, attacked Germany’s support for Nord Stream, which was being promoted by Gazprom and E.ON. He compared it to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that divided Poland between the two powers.

Nord Stream became operational on Tuesday (6 September).

Poland, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers, has made external energy policy a priority for its term in office. It wants EU leaders to agree to greater transparency in energy deals at a summit on 9 December. National energy ministers are expected to discuss the Commission’s proposal at an informal meeting later this month and at a formal session in November.

Jerzy Buzek, the European Parliament president and a former prime minister of Poland, welcomed the Commission’s proposal. “The European Union must present a single interface in its relations with its external partners, both the energy producer and transit countries,” he said.

The Commission announcement was also welcomed by Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, the leader of the Polish centre-right MEPs. The leadership of the Parliament’s centre-right EPP group will tomorrow (9 September) discuss external energy policy at a meeting in Wroclaw, which Oettinger will attend.

Eurelectric, the European electricity industry association, welcomed the Commission’s proposal but said that there should be greater prominence given to the importance of an integrated EU energy market.

‘Antiquated approach’

Claude Turmes, a Green MEP and member of the Parliament’s energy committee, said that the Commission was preoccupied by an antiquated approach looking to ensure fossil-fuel deliveries to the EU through so-called partnerships with transit and supplier countries, with no attention given to forming strategic alliances with those countries looking to push forward with green energy technologies.

Giles Chichester, a UK Conservative MEP and a former chairman of the Parliament’s energy committee, said that the Commission’s proposal was “the worst kind of meddling”.

He said: “Our energy arrangements are Britain’s own business, not the Commission’s. This is an attempt to control and interfere with our individual trading interests on a new and deeply worrying scale. The Commission is up to its old empire-building tricks.”