Committee wants to safeguard gas supplies
The Economic and Social Committee of the Council of Ministers has highlighted the need to safeguard the continuity of natural gas supplies, as well as the efforts being made to boost the share of this fuel in Europe's primary energy supply. It did so in its Opinion on the European Commission Proposal for a European Parliament and Council Decision on guidelines for trans-European energy networks, which has been published in the Official Journal. The Proposal updates the indicative list of projects of common interest in the energy sector. It alters the description of four specific projects already on the list, adds 12 new projects and includes three projects, which the Commission had proposed in previous guidelines and which are now sufficiently advanced. The proposed update includes considerably more projects connected with gas networks (14) than with electricity networks (5). This highlights the greater need to safeguard the continuity of natural gas supplies, as well as the efforts being made to boost the share of this fuel in Europe's primary energy supply. Since the Committee gave this Opinion on 27 January 1999, the European Parliament has approved the Proposal to lay down a number of guidelines relating to trans-European Networks in the energy field with a number of technical amendments.