Parliamentary Confirmation Hearing of the Commission Vice-President-Designate for Energy Union (6 October 2014)

On 6 October 2014, the European Parliament will be hearing the Vice-President designate for Energy Union. The two committees responsible for the hearing are the ENVI and ITRE.

You can watch the hearing online here. The session will start at 14.30 Brussels time.

The Energy Union portfolio has been offered to Alenka Bratušek, former Slovenian Prime Minister.

In his mission letter to the appointed candidate, Commission president-elect Juncker gave her the following areas of responsibility (emphasis added):

" Your objective will be to bring about a resilient Energy Union, with a forward-looking climate change policy, by steering and co-ordinating the delivery of key initiatives. We need to pool our resources, combine infrastructures and unite our negotiating power vis-à-vis third countries. We need to diversify our energy sources, and reduce the high energy dependency of several of our Member States. I want to keep our European energy market open to our neighbours. However, if the price of energy from the East becomes too expensive, either in commercial or political terms, Europe should be able to switch swiftly to other supply channels. We need to be able to reverse energy flows when necessary.

And we need to strengthen the share of renewable energies on our continent. This is not only a matter of responsible climate policy. It is, at the same time, an industrial policy imperative if we still want to have affordable energy at our disposal in the medium term. I strongly believe in the potential of “Green Growth” and I want the EU to become the world number one in renewable energies. We should also enhance energy efficiency beyond the 2020 objective, notably when it comes to buildings. A binding 30% objective for energy efficiency by 2030 is to me the minimum if we want to be credible.

During our mandate, I would like you to focus on the following, in your role as Vice-President:

• Coordinating Commission efforts to ensure the EU achieves its targets in the field of energy for 2020 and 2030, including as part of the Europe 2020 Strategy.
• Completing the internal energy market, by connecting infrastructures and engaging with regulators and stakeholders at national and European level in order to improve, reinforce and fully apply EU legislation in this area. Increasing competition should help drive down costs for citizens and businesses and boost growth.
• Coordinating specific actions to strengthen energy security on a European scale, starting with the need to counteract any possible energy shortages over the first three to twelve months. Europe’s energy dependency should also be reduced by diversifying sources and routes of energy imports and pooling our negotiating power.
• Supporting the Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness in the project to present, within the first three months of our mandate, the jobs, growth and investment package announced in the Political Guidelines. The package should help to mobilise additional public and private investment in infrastructure such as energy networks, as well as in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• Tapping the job potential of “Green Growth” and making Europe the world number one in renewable energy. "

For an overview of the possible hard topics that the designate candidate can face during her hearing, check the following press article "Bratušek commission nomination faces backlash" (Interfax).