ACER welcomes the request of the European Commission for Member States to fully implement and apply the rules stablished by the third package as well as the electricity and gas network codes included in its Report on the progress towards the Internal Energy Market published today. In its report the Commission also highlights how the single energy market has started to hake solid shape thanks to the cooperative efforts at European level of national administrations, the energy regulators under the umbrella of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the network operators (ENTSOs).
ACER Director Alberto Pototschnig said “we are very glad that the Commission strongly supports the full implementation of the Third Energy Package and that it also recognises the key role played by regional initiatives coordinated by the Agency as providers of a solid basis for delivering the internal energy market through concrete results that are directly visible”.
Market Integrity and Transparency
As the EC report summaries, regulatory oversight to ensure market integrity and avoid market abuses has been tightened thanks to the application of the rules laid down in the 2011 REMIT Regulation on Wholesale Energy Markets Integrity and Transparency. The document also highlights that a central information transparency platform for the publication of data in electricity markets will also be established by ENTSO-E by early 2015.
ACER welcomes the relevance that the Commission attributes to providing ACER and the National Energy Regulators (NRAs) with the necessary resources to carry out these significant new tasks effectively, in close cooperation with financial market supervisors and competition authorities. “It is of the utmost importance that regulators and ACER keep a close eye on the trading activities, because consumers and policy makers need to trust that prices are not manipulated to the advantage of some but detriment of consumers”, the report says.
Deepening the Internal Energy Market
As stated in its strategic Conclusions Paper “Bridge to 2025” ACER supports the Commission’s view that once the agreement among stakeholders and policy makers on the most urgently needed market rules is reached, the focus needs to be redirected to the implementation and strict application in practice. As the Commission report states, this requires first and foremost the full cooperation of all the actors, within the Member States - by national administrations and regulators - but also at European level - by the Commission, but also by ACER and the ENTSOs.