(29 November 2010) The MEPS stress the “importance of skilled and qualified workers in gas and electricity sector.” The Parliament asks the Commission to examine in consultation with the social partners concerned how to address and encourage vocational education and training.”. The position echoes the attention the social partners for gas and for electricity art6929] have been asking in their joint contributions to the Commission consultation on the European energy policy 2020. EPSU has argued for many years that a lack of skilled workers will pose bottlenecks to the further development of Europe energy infrastructures.
The plenary of the European Parliament adopted the [report of Polish liberal MEP Kolarska-Bobinska on Towards a new European Energy Strategy 2020 25 November 2010. The report continues with the usual push for more liberalization and more competition without questioning the negative impacts there have been of liberalized markets. It also does not make real choices. It promotes renewables, coal, nuclear, hydro, gas, combined heat power, suggests the development of smart grids, wants investment in pipelines, LNG, shale gas and more external suppliers. It underlines the need for investments in distribution network and in research and development. Energy efficiency is to be a top priority but amendments for binding targets were defeated by the conservatives. The chapter on energy security argue for the further extension of membership of the Energy Community to more countries in the EU neighborhood especially in the Eastern Partnership. Apart from the Balkan countries and the EU and Norway, also Ukraine and Moldova are members and negotiations with Turkey are ongoing. EPSU has actively followed this development.
Many of these issues are already picked up by the European Commission which published its Energy strategy following the public consultation earlier. The conservative majority of the Parliament has shown its colours by rejecting proposals for a full investigation of the consequences of the internal market and chose to demand a second sector inquiry. These are carried out by DG Competition and focus solely on what can be considered barriers to competition (First inquiry report). Parliament argues for a European Energy Community going further to implement the Lisbon Treaty. Parliament did adopt a number of points EPSU supports:
- It calls on the Commission and the European regulators (ACER) to develop proposals on how the involvement of stakeholders can be strengthened. EPSU is a long standing advocate of this stronger role and recently this was also echoed by a European seminar on energy poverty.
- Parliament underlines that respect for human rights and the social dimension should be part of the energy dialogues (with countries such as Russia, Azerbaijan etc. ) This was further confirmed by a resolution of the European Parliament on the same day on human rights and social and environmental standards in international trade agreements
- MEPs sees it as essential that “future funding of energy investments should focus on projects which create the largest number of jobs” and they also support initiatives that “facilitates the adaptation of human resources needs to the move towards a low CO-2 energy mix.”
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