Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 13 December 2016 - Strasbourg

"Clean Energy for All" package (debate)

  Jeppe Kofod (S&D). – Mr President, Commissioners, let me start by congratulating you, and indeed the whole Commission, on this very impressive winter package with real European value. It is a good starting point, but I also think that we need to raise our ambitions. Let me give a few brief examples. When I read the Commission proposal on ACER, I see words such as ‘may’ and ‘recommend’, but if we want a truly interconnected and sustainable European energy market that effectively does away with transmission bottlenecks, those words must be changed to ‘shall’ and ‘decide’ in a number of places. Europe needs an energy regulator. We need a much stronger ACER with real powers. On renewables, we remain embarrassingly close to the Commission’s own ‘doing nothing’ scenario. I will once again quote Commission President Juncker, who said that Europe should be number one in renewables, so let us beef up our ambitions as well on that point. We are ready to work with you, we have a good starting point, but we need more ambition.