While the analysis of the challenges facing Europe as pointed out in the Green Paper is largely supported, EPSU rejects the priority of creating the internal market in electricity and gas as a corner stone of Europe's energy policy. Continuing with the internal market contradicts and undermines several of the other priorities which EPSU regards as more important. EPSU will argue that a priority needs to be that Europe's energy policy is democratically accountable. This is currently not the case with Europe's energy policy being dominated by powerful companies, their corporate lawyers and lobbyists, while organisations of poor citizens can not make their voice heard. Most of the measures proposed in the Green Paper are an (often worthwhile) technocrat's response to profound issues but which remove control and accountability away from local and national level and citizens without replacing it with European democratic control. The European Commission or even the Council of Ministers should therefore not have the power to decide a country's energy mix. The Green paper was discussed by the EPSU Standing Committee on Public Utilities, 11 may 2006, Luxembourg.
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