Interne markt voor elektriciteit en gas: 18 lidstaten lopen achter met implementeren EU-richtlijnen (en)

The European Commission today sent letters of formal notice to Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Luxembourg asking them to transpose the EU directives on the internal market in electricity and gas into national law. "This legislation is an essential step towards the completion of a genuine competitive EU energy market, which is essential for the success of the Lisbon strategy. Since 1 July 2004, the law entitles all non-domestic consumers of gas and electricity to choose their own supplier. The Commission needs to ensure delivery of the legitimate expectations it has itself fostered on the markets and among the public," said Loyola de Palacio, European Commission Vice-President responsible for energy and transport. "This is a key instrument for guaranteeing genuine competition in a unified EU market. However, much work still has to be done to deal with the dominant and even monopolistic positions of the incumbent operators and investments will be needed to guarantee the interoperability of grids and networks, interconnection and an adequate level of capabilities and infrastructure," she added.

The Commission has decided to send letters of formal notice to 18 Member States (see list above) for failure to communicate national measures for the transposition of the two directives on the internal market in electricity (Directive 2003/54/EC of 26 June 2003) and/or the internal market in gas (Directive 2003/55/EC of 26 June 2003).

These two directives are essential to guarantee the opening up of the electricity and gas markets in the EU. In practice, they have provided freedom of choice of supplier for industrial customers since 1 July 2004 and provide this for domestic customers as from 1 July 2007. The directives combine opening up to competition with maintaining service quality, the universal service, the protection of vulnerable customers and the objectives of security of supply.

These directives will determine the shape of the EU energy market for years to come and will serve as a basis for the development of energy partnerships with the EU's neighbours, in particular in the Western Balkans.

The Commission would point out that the actual opening up to competition is not something that can be appreciated right from the moment the directives are transposed but will be reflected by indicators such as the number of changes of suppliers.

For this reason, it is closely monitoring the integration and degree of opening up of the energy markets to competition and, each year, will therefore publish, as requested by the Barcelona European Council in 2002, a benchmarking report,^[1] the next of which will appear in December. Today, only an average of one quarter of major users have changed electricity suppliers in the EU since the market started to be opened up (at the end of the 1990s).

Annex

State of communication of transposition measures
(NEM - national execution measures)

^[1] ;http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/electricity/benchmarking/index_en.htm