Jean-Arnold Vinois, Acting Director DG Energy, delivering his Keynote Speech at the ETA Ceremony 2011. \\ ETA 2011 winners and Jean-Michel Glachant, Director FSR.

The Winner of the 2011 Energy Transparency Award has been announced at the ETA Ceremony on November 9th in Brussels.

"The Selection Committee decided to assign the 2011 European Transparency Award to the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) for its contribution to the conception and implementation of a Transparency Regulation at European scale.

The Selection Committee warmly congratulates the Council of European Energy Regulators for its past achievements and encourages regulators to keep the innovation and transparency track they have so successfully pursued, for the benefit of energy consumers and energy undertakings in Europe."

Last year, since the ETA was assigned for the first time, the Selection Committee decided to give special emphasis to past achievements, thus rewarding Nord Pool for their pioneering and inspiring activity. This year, the Selection Committee was forward looking, taking into account the fact that the recently approved Regulation on Energy Market Integrity and Transparency has a remarkable potential to substantially improve transparency of European energy markets. It will be the responsibility of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) to implement this Regulation and to make sure that the expected benefits will materialize soon.

The CEER Pilot Project Energy Trade Data Reporting Scheme demonstrated within a period of only six months that the establishment of an effective European monitoring of wholesale energy trading based on a largely electronic data collection will be challenging, but is feasible. It served as a prototype for the implementation of the Regulation on Energy Market Integrity and Transparency and hence it contributed to persuade EU legislators about the possibility and usefulness of more systemic and sophisticated EU-wide 4arket monitoring. The pro-active role of energy regulators along the whole legislative process should also be emphasized. In fact, the CEER initiated a close and productive dialogue with financial market regulators many years ago aimed at providing comprehensive and coherent supervision and regulation of all energy markets, physical and financial. Moreover, the CEER has always asked the European Institutions to set up appropriate EU wide market and price monitoring mechanisms. 

Walter Boltz, CEER Vice President
(who initiated the “Energy Trade Data Reporting Scheme” pilot project):
“this award gives more visibility of the work of regulators and it’s a symbol for the success that we can achieve if we have a high degree of good cooperation with the industry, the legislators and the Commission”.

Carlo Crea, CEER Vice President:
“ the Energy Transperency Award represents the recognition of what CEER is doing to increase the Transparency on the European Energy Market and it’s a push to continue CEER’s efforts”.

Johannes Kindler, CEER Vice President and head of CEER’s Financial Services Working Group:
“the most important things is that as regulators we’ve managed to create a sound balance between liberalism and control, regulators are often criticised to overregulate and according to the market and the Commission they have just found the right balance and I’m proud of that”.