Mombaur (PPE-DE), rapporteur. – (DE) Madam President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, many thanks. Security of supply in the natural gas sector can certainly be an issue for the European Union, which, taken as a whole, is dependent on imports for some 75% of its natural gas, although – unlike with oil – there is no suppliers’ cartel. I might add that the supplier countries are themselves dependent on exports to the EU, as natural gas is of any value only if it is transported and sold. On the other hand, the countries supplying us are Russia, Algeria, Libya, and the countries around the Caspian Sea, the stability of which is a matter of concern to the EU. It is regrettable that the Commission does not discuss all this in its proposal.

What is behind the proposal instead is, in essence, interruptions in supplies to the EU market. I regret having to say, Madam Vice-President, on behalf of the lead Committee, that the proposal, as it stands, has found no supporters in this House, and that some of us reject it outright. That is not the position taken by the main Committee, which proposes that the plenary should send a message to the Commission, the Council, the participants in the market and also to the supplying and producing countries by dealing with the issue in a new and different way, turning the proposal upside down and – let me say this with particular clarity – refraining from creating a category of dirigiste European actions.

This, then, is about three things: one is not seeing management so much as being primarily about holding and administering reserve stocks, that is, deterring investors from doing what they are actually meant to do and emphasising the responsibility of state agencies, but rather doing the precise opposite by encouraging businesses to invest, by emphasising the role they play and taking into account the fact that they already do a great deal towards securing supply; the ways in which they do this are various, including the diversification of sources of supply, international pipelines and storage tanks, long-term supply contracts and the like. Above all, the Commission proposal fails to engage at a fundamental level with the fact that supply as a whole does indeed have a price. Parliament cannot approve the handing over to the European level – represented by the Commission – of instruments that suspend the market price, prevent markets from signalling prices and shortages and make no reference to the prices obtaining in the system of supply as a whole.

The second essential approach should involve addressing the responsibilities of the Member States, which have done, and are able to do, a great deal in this area. I must at this juncture, Madam Vice-President, make the straightforward point that as recently as 1998 – which is only a couple of years ago – the Commission shared the general consensus that what the Member States do in this area was quite sufficient. That was, indeed, stated quite officially by the Energy Council. In this, the different actual conditions in the Member States also have to be taken into account.

My third point is that, at EU level, it could then be our task to create a framework for obligations on enterprises, with which we could equip the Member States, so that these in turn could impose this as an obligation on their own enterprises. At European Union level, provision could also be made to empower the Member States in crisis situations, conditional upon business not being able to respond itself, or else not in good time. Only in extreme cases and grave crisis situations could European law oblige the Member States to take specific measures – I emphasise that it would be European law that would oblige them to act. I hope I have not misunderstood what you have just said, but we emphatically repudiate your suggestion that the European level should intervene directly in the government of the Member States, of which there will soon be twenty-five; it cannot do that. That Parliament must not under any circumstances approve such a thing was the unanimous opinion of all the committees that have considered this.