In the meeting of the Exchange Council chaired by Dr. Gün-ther Rabensteiner in Leipzig on 8 June 2011 the Exchange Council discussed the ef-fects of the nuclear power moratorium on trading on EEX. Immediately after the an-nouncement in mid-March significantly stronger interest in trading was recorded – in particular on the Power Derivatives Market. Hence, the situation over the last weeks has shown once again that exchanges make the effects of political decisions visible through the prices established and the volumes traded on these. In this context, the energy markets cannot be viewed in isolation on a national basis – the German power market, in particular, is embedded in the interconnected European electricity market. The Exchange Council concluded that political decisions which require structural changes of the energy supply system should consider possible effects on the energy markets and the competition.
Furthermore, the Exchange Council discussed the status of various legislative initia-tives in the field of energy and financial market regulation. The Exchange Council wel-comed, in particular, the proposals regarding an EU Regulation on Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT). The proposal e.g. contained uniform rules on the ban on market manipulation and insider trading throughout Europe. In addition to the exchanges which are already subject to supervision and, hence, transparent today, the largely unsupervised field of OTC (over-the-counter) trading is to be included in energy market supervision. The Exchange Council pointed out that common standards in the field of transparency and supervision constitute preconditions for a uniform European internal market for power. However, the Exchange Council requested a sense of proportion in this respect. Over-regulation could once again jeopardise liberalisation.
The expansion of connectivity constituted another subject in the meeting. EEX is plan-ning a technical expansion which will optimise the trading participants‘ access to ex-change trading via the Trayport® GlobalVisionSM frontend for the second half of the year 2011. At the moment, displaying of the EEX products on the traders’ screens is supported by a software application which requires regular installations by the trading participants. The newly developed Global Vision Portal solution (GV Portal) provides for a central connection of the Trayport systems to EEX so that the technical complexi-ty on the customers‘ side will be reduced considerably in the future. As a result, EEX will be able to make innovations – such as new products – available for trading much faster.
Moreover, the Exchange Council approved the plans of the exchange for the conver-sion of the French power futures to financial settlement. In December 2010, EEX intro-duced financial contracts on a weekly basis for the French market area. The futures products with physical settlement (months, quarters, years) offered in addition are also to be converted into contracts with financial settlement until the end of the year. With these measures the exchange is continuing the harmonisation of the trading processes and products on the Power Derivatives Market for Germany and France.
In the framework of the Primary Market Auction for European Emission Allowances the introduction of a new participant category for exchange trading was implemented on the basis of a resolution of the Exchange Council. With this step EEX has responded to inquiries from Germany and other EU member states as to whether government au-thorities can be directly admitted to the exchange as auctioneers. The Exchange Council, thus, expressly supports the EEX initiative to expand its role as a platform for auctioning of EU Emission Allowances also beyond the year 2012.
The Exchange Council of EEX is an official body of the exchange under the German Exchange Act. It consists of in total 24 members who adequately represent the various interest groups and business circles: In addition to the trading participants with 19 elected members from various sectors (transmission system operators and power trading companies, municipal utilities and regional suppliers, brokers and financial service providers as well as commercial consumers), four representatives from associations and one investors’ representative are members of the Exchange Council. The tasks of the Exchange Council include, in particular, the adoption of the rules and regulations of the exchange and their amendments. In addition, its tasks comprise the appointment and supervision of the Management Board of the Exchange and the appointment of the head of the Market Surveillance Office.
