The European Parliament adopted by 375 votes to 161, with 60 abstentions, a legislative resolution on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices and repealing Directive 2008/92/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning a Community procedure to improve the transparency of gas and electricity prices charged to industrial end-users.
Parliament’s position, adopted at first reading following the ordinary legislative procedure, amended the Commission proposal as follows:
Aim of the Regulation: it is stated that the objective of this Regulation, namely the establishment of a common legal framework for the systematic production of European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States but can rather, be better achieved at Union level.
The amended text also stated that:
- this Regulation does not entail any harmonisation of the structure of prices or charges across Member States;
- the collection of data on natural gas and electricity prices should follow the established practices within the European Statistical System;
- Member States should compile the data on natural gas and electricity prices by using the most appropriate sources and methods to provide the required information;
- the data on prices and conditions of sale to final customers, and the breakdown of the number of final customers by consumption in each consumption band, should contain all the information necessary to enable the Commission to decide on appropriate measures or proposals in relation to energy policy.
Coverage: Parliament stated that Member States shall ensure that the data collection and compilation provide comprehensible and comparable high-quality data that are representative of their respective natural gas and electricity prices and consumption.
Member States shall not be obliged to transmit data on natural gas prices for household customers if the consumption of natural gas in the household sector accounts for less than 1.5 % of national final energy consumption in the household sector. At least every three years, the Commission (Eurostat) shall review which Member States are not obliged to transmit data.
Transmission of data: Member States shall provide statistics to the Commission (Eurostat) within three months of the end of the relevant reference period. The reference periods for the data specified in Annexes I and II shall be annual (January to December) or biannual (January to June and July to December).
Quality assurance: every three years, Member States shall provide Eurostat with a standard quality report on the data in accordance with the quality criteria laid down in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics. The Commission shall assess the quality of the data provided and shall use that assessment and an analysis of the quality reports in order to prepare and publish a report on the quality of European statistics covered by this Regulation. It shall adopt implementing acts establishing technical quality assurance requirements regarding the content of the quality reports.