Take Action Now To Move Past Market Integration Deadlock, EURELECTRIC Tells Florence Forum

The European Commission urgently needs to take measures to get Europe out of the deadlock on implementing cross-border integration of intraday electricity markets, EURELECTRIC told policymakers, regulators, system operators and power exchanges at the Florence Forum today. The cross-border intraday (XBID) process, to be implemented by power exchanges and transmission system operators (TSOs), was initially scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014 but is experiencing significant and continued delays.

EURELECTRIC Markets Committee Chairman Juan Jose Alba Rios said: “The XBID project is a fundamental precondition for the Internal Energy Market, but progress in this area has been disappointingly slow. Moreover, given the lack of progress so far, the latest proposed go-live date – end 2015 – is clearly unrealistic. For years EURELECTRIC has been urging the parties involved to come up with clear deadlines and commitments. If we do not see concrete signs of progress at this Florence Forum, we need the European Commission to enact a set of ‘quick win’ measures that can provide some momentum towards the XBID implementation.”

EURLECTRIC continues to fully support the XBID project. Consequently, the proposed ‘quick wins’ are neither a fall-back solution nor a new project jeopardising market integration but a way to make progress in line with market integration while the EU XBID platform is being developed. Such ‘quick wins’ could include pushing TSOs to implement incremental steps on some borders of the North West Europe region where poorly implemented and unworkable intraday markets exist or clear improvements are possible, for instance on the Belgian-French border.

In addition to raising its concerns about the XBID project, EURELECTRIC used the Florence Forum to call for a discussion about and a possible review of the procedure for developing network codes.

“Network codes are the backbone of the market integration process, and we should take a close look at their development process to make sure we get it right. Stakeholders’ involvement should be strengthened and convergence across Europe should be a number one priority throughout the entire development of codes. In addition, decisive action should be taken to strengthen the independence of the governance process. We remain strongly concerned that ENTSO-E is given extensive power in elaborating the network codes, despite being an interested party. We would therefore encourage opening a discussion on actions to increase the control of the network code drafting process by ACER or the European Commission,” Mr Alba Rios said.

Background:

The Electricity Regulatory Forum, or Florence Forum, is organised by the European Commission and brings together stakeholders from the electricity sector to discuss progress towards the EU's objective of achieving an internal market for electricity by 2014. Meetings are usually held twice a year over a two-day period. EURELECTRIC is regularly invited to share its views.