 It's good that we have Mikhail Worstoffer, the Director of Energy Policy within DG Energy and the Commission, and I think particularly the timing could not be better. I think I remember at an IIA event, was it two years ago or a year and a half ago, Vice President Sefkovic was making the, explaining how in a sense the pieces of the jigsaw for our 2030 package were being put together. The Commission was taking its time to get this right and to get all the different pieces, market design, governance, and so on. So we're very fortunate to have one of the people working with the jigsaw pieces in Brussels here before us today, to maybe outline the latest developments on the prospects for our energy union. It's obviously a huge issue here with Brexit and other issues looming, but Mikhail, you're very welcome. We look forward to hearing your presentation. Thank you very much for inviting me here in the Institute. That's the first time I'm in the Institute for German Affairs, but I've heard a lot about it, so you understand regular visitors and always very good debate. I'm very happy, obviously, because energy and climate policy are one of the top priorities of this Commission. And I have prepared a few slides, and then if you then have questions and answers afterwards. So I'm working since six years in the energy policy field, a little bit more, six and a half. Michael had been around in Brussels on a number of issues, discussing then in Council and Parliament. And before that, I worked a lot on competitiveness issue, research, innovation, and a bit of on-modeling. So that is my path, and I'm, as I said, happy to start now. So I will speak about the energy union a little bit in the past, what has been achieved till there, and then try to give an outlook on what's coming. The challenge here is that we are in the middle of preparing a big package for the 30th of November to be adopted by the Commission. So I cannot reveal all the secrets, because that's partly still discussed and partly then revealed in two weeks, but I can obviously give you some indication. First we call the energy union one of the top priorities of this Commission. And really in the discussions or in the atmosphere we are right now with a lot of debate about Europe or in Europe, energy and climate policy are key issues. There is generally support. It has its huge contribution to the economy, to jobs and growth. And I think we have achieved quite a bit when we agreed on the 2030 energy and climate framework in October 2014 with our three or four headline targets on greenhouse gas emission reduction, renewable energy, EU share of at least 27%, energy efficiency on 27%, and 15% interconnection in electricity. So this was already a major step for Europe. This was what came in in the Paris Agreement from the European side. And I think our Commissioner Miguel Arias-Cagnetta on energy and climate negotiated the deal together with the others. So we are rather happy with the outcome of Paris Agreement. And in a way what we present now is also the implementation of the 2030 agreement or of the framework and also then broadened with a new commission to what we call the energy union with five key, key objectives, energy security, solidarity and trust, a fully integrated energy market based on energy efficiency, decarbonisation of the economy. And last but not least, often a little bit forgotten is the research, innovation and competitiveness aspect, which is also a key aspect of our energy union. The whole energy union with the five dimension has 15 concrete actions. With the end of the year, I think we have 13 actions on the table. There are one or two which will come next year. But the bulk of the delivery on the energy union is this year. So if I look a little bit what happened already this year, I mean we have started with what we call the security of supply package, which is still in the negotiation with the European Parliament and the Council. So what we have put on the table is a package of one of our three priorities on security of supply, competitive sustainability, which is focused on gas, but not only. So in terms of legislation, we propose two revisions. One on the security of gas supply, which means Europe is dependent on gas. I mean, more than 50% of our gas comes from outside the EU. The biggest supplier are Russia, Norway, Algeria and now more and more LNG. And how can we make sure that we are diversification and that in terms of a crisis, we have a system that we help each other. So there's a lot of focus on solidarity and regional cooperation, which is in that security of gas supply revision. And we did base that obvious on tests that we can work better together and achieve better results. The other legal element is what we call intergovernmental agreement. It's an agreement between one EU member state and the third country. And here, the basic idea is to make sure that these agreement are in line with EU law. So the compatibility with EU law is ensured and we propose an Exanta assessment by the Commission to make sure that the member states negotiation with third countries have something in line with all our rules in the EU field. The two other papers were strategy papers on LNG and storage and strategy paper for heating and cooling because so far a lot of our policies focus on power sector. So we also want to work more in terms of energy efficiency and renewables in particular for the heating and cooling sector and another sector, which I won't mention now, but maybe in question is the transport sector, obviously, where we need to do more. So this package is rather well-advanced. In a way, it was well-received in principle by member states and parliament. We are in the final stages on the IGA with trilogues right now. We are struggling a bit more in the Council on the revision of the gas security of supply because there are some discussions with our member states. And on the other two, we had the parliament and the member states discussion and it highlighted as a package the importance of LNG. We might come back also for Ireland, LNG is an important factor, but it's not maybe used enough in all over Europe. A lot of our terminals are 30% used and a lot of our terminals are in south-west Europe, maybe in southeast Europe, where the dependence on one single supplier is quite high or we have six member states dependent on one single supplier, where we need that diversification. The package, which we did in the beginning of the year, I will go through on the package, which is more focused on decarbonisation and the climate aspects of the energy union, which was presented before the summer, and which is about the effort-sharing regulation, the non-ETS sector, you're following that probably very closely. It's important not only the ETS proposal is now being discussed with parliament and council, so this proposal complements the rules for the effort-sharing regulation with targets from member states. The second proposal is about land use, land use change and forestry, which post-2020 will be included in the framework. And last but not least, we also presented, but that is a strategy, on low-emission mobility, where we focus on transport, alternative energy and zero-emission vehicles. So this is also on the table right now and being discussed in council and parliament. So what we have now working on for the next weeks, but we had been working on, is what we call clean energy package, clean energy for all, the exact title is not yet clear. But it's mainly about three things, energy efficiency first, a focus on energy consumers, and a focus on renewables. As I said, it's the first big proposal from this commission after the Paris Agreement has been signed, so in the energy field, we thought this is obviously needed at the right time right now. It's the biggest package we have ever proposed. It involves eight legislation, legislative text, one new and seven revision of existing texts, and it covers all kind of market energy efficiency renewables. Why we do that big package? I think in the energy field, it has always been the case, but more and more everything is integrated. Everything we do on the renewables has an impact on the markets. The markets have changed. Everything we do on the energy efficiency side has impacts. So we thought the momentum right now is there to propose it together to make sure it's a coherent proposal, so that everything we are not coming with bits and pieces and everything is done in the past. So we have a coherent proposal to demonstrate the way to a low-carbon, low-emission energy transition over the next. It has a certain focus on 2030 over the next 14 years. It will be accompanied by what we call an enabling framework, meaning not everything is being dealt with in the legislative text. There's a lot we need to enable all that. One key aspect is obviously financing. We have the FC fund, the strategic fund since the arrival of this new commission, the so-called Junker fund with 315 billion. Two years after or one year after, because it took some time to set it up, energy is the biggest sector profiting from the FC. So, and that in energy efficiency and in renewables and in infrastructure. We have also the Connecting Europe facility where we have project of common interest, where you can apply for co-funding from the commission. We have the regional funds where we also have a lot on priorities in the energy and climate fund. So, the financing aspect is one of the enablers. There's also the skills and social dimension of it and also the international dimension. So, with the package, we try to explain what is needed in addition to what's coming up now. So, I will start, sorry, with the energy efficiency. Energy efficiency first. So, whatever we can do to promote energy efficiency in all our sectors is needed. So, we have a relatively recently adopted two, three years energy efficiency directive, but with a framework of 2020. So, one of the political decision will be if we go from the 27% to 30% energy efficiency, like a target for 2030, as foreseen in the October European Council. So, the commission will make a new proposal on the target. All this is accompanied by a lot of modeling scenarios to see and explain the benefits and the cost of all this proposal. The European Parliament has asked for 40% energy efficiency target and we will evaluate all kind of implications going from 27 to eventually a higher. What are the benefits in terms of import savings? Each percentage in energy efficiency, we will need to import less gas, for example, or what are the costs of it in terms of going for a higher target. So, this is one element. Then we won't revise that much, given that it's a recent proposal from the commission and just being implemented by the member state, but the obligation sheaths on metering and billing is one aspect we will also revise and modernize, basically. The other aspect is the building directive, the energy performance of building directive. As you know, the energy use of buildings is about 40% of the EU total final energy consumption and CO2 emission. So, the building sector is still an area where a lot of energy is consumed and a lot of CO2. It's, depending on the member states, it's either gas, nuclear in France, oil, or renewables, but it's a lot of gas. 70, 80% of our heating system is by gas. So, what we want to achieve here is also not an overall revision, but it's mainly about streamlining the text, outdated provision, and also the possibility to smarter buildings, to smarten the buildings, by eventually having charging stations in buildings or other possibilities to help the take up of smart building technology. Accompanied by that initiative is a special focus on smart financing for smart buildings, which is part of that enabling framework, which I mentioned before. So, this is the focus on energy efficiency. There might be other elements from the eco design work program that we will include, but these two are the big focus to make sure energy efficiency is the key aspect. The next major package, and it evolves legally for existing electricity directive, electricity regulation, security of supply for electricity, and the whole governance ACER, governance regulation. So, this is something we have also been preparing for the last two, three years. The electricity markets has changed a lot. In the last five years, we see more and more renewables, more and more intermittent renewables, so we certainly need a more flexible system, flexible on the demand side as well as on the supply side. As you know well, we had the pleasure to visit your grid this morning. There's wind 20%, it can go up much, much higher. There are a lot of fluctuation and how to cope with that in the market design, in our electricity market, that's the main aim of that initiative. So, the key elements here that we have obviously interconnected electricity market, there's still, there had been a lot of progress. Let me start with that. We have been very much successful in, for example, network codes. We have finalized all the electricity network codes with the help of all the stakeholders and TSOs and bodies to make that happen. In the gas side, I think there's one remaining network code still to be agreed on, but I mean that helps and we already see the possibility side of a more interconnected market. There is, however, in the last couple of years because of the situation, of the intermittency of the renewables, the need for some backup capacity, that some of our member states, 13, have introduced one form or another of so-called capacity renumeration mechanism. So we want to make sure, also on that proposal, that this is maybe a last resort, but it should be in a broader context, of a regional context and not a pure national. Shouldn't be an obstacle for the internal market. So we will define, in accordance with the state aid guidelines, some kind of principles for future or existing capacity renumeration mechanism. We will also not only focus on the wholesale markets, but also on the retail markets. So there, the role of consumers, the active consumer to have a word to say, the possibility to get information to change providers, all that will be reinforced. Another aspect similar, even though the situation is different to the security of supply for gas, we will change a lot the security of supply electricity because it's the most outdated, it dates from 2008. So there, we want to introduce also some kind of risk preparedness with a regional approach and avoid blackouts, basically, obviously, but in a regional context, which we will describe and which we will propose. And as I said before, the whole market design will also involve some changes on the institutional side. So we are thinking about Acer, the regulator, having an increased say on cross-border issues, for example, we are looking at the role of NCE and NCE, and also the role, which in our view has increased on DSOs, on distribution system operators, and the cooperation between TSOs and DSOs. So we will provide some more details, no new revolution, but some more progressive ideas reflected always on the basis of regional cooperation and going and promote the internal energy market. Peace of legislation is the renewable energy directive revision. So here again, the renewables energy directive, now as it stands now, provides a framework for 2020, including national binding targets for each of our member states. This obviously will stay. We have no intention at all. So the 2020 agreed national targets and the system will stay. Now we are moving to a system where we have decided on a European-wide target and no national targets anymore. So we have to reflect that in the renewable energy directive, but also in the next proposal and the last one I will present on the governance. For the renewable energy, it's clear that we need also here an enabling framework for the renewables development in the electricity sector, but it will not only be focused on the electricity sector, we will also like to mainstream and promote renewables in the heating and cooling sector following the strategy paper we had and also having more and more renewables in the transport sector. I heard this morning also from the government side here, the promotion of e-vehicles, electric vehicles and so on. There are a lot of incentives. It may not going as fast as some wish, but this is obviously something we also want to accompany. He also again, empowering and informing the consumer and making sure the EU binding target is achieved. So this are the main discussion. There's also a lot of discussion on the role of bioenergy, biomass in that context, obviously in the sustainable criteria where we haven't yet set our final position. So this is something we are still working on it. Let me come to the proposal on governance. So this is a new legislative proposal and its origin is from the fact in the 2030 energy and climate framework, we are going to EU binding targets. So we cannot infringe ourselves when we don't achieve it. So we also had agreed at the time that in order to make sure that collectively we reach the target, we need a system of planning, reporting, monitoring. At the same time, we want not to create any additional or new administrative burden. So with the proposal of the governance, we did a huge exercise to look at all the planning and reporting member states have to do in the energy archie and the energy legislation. So there are roughly 90 reporting and planning obligations in the energy field for member states. So we looked at all of them and some of them we can repeal, we can cancel, they are outdated. Some of them we will put together in this new governance proposal and some of these reports and plans might stay because they are very, very technical or they are weekly reports on oil prices, things like that, which have their own life in a way. But for example, the national plans for energy efficiency, the national plans for renewables and some other plans will all be integrated in one big plan on energy and climate. From 21 onwards. So every member states has to prepare and starting right now, not only when the governance comes into force, on a post-2020 national plan, involving the stakeholders, ideally discussing it with the neighbors and with the commission and then send us the final plans well before 2020. We have already started that discussion since one or two years. We have already circulated to member states expert group kind of templates of these plans. What is the information we need? We don't want to create new information and the member states has the right to keep the flexibility or to keep the energy mix or whatsoever. But we need to know if, for example, on the renewable side or on the energy efficiency side, but it will cover all the five dimensions of the energy union, where the member states are going, compare it and if we are on track. So once these plans, and I think also for business, it will give a certain predictability where the member states, where the governance is going medium term, long term on the energy side. So these plans need to be submitted to the commission. We will already, based on the first plans, assess would we, with these contributions, reach the at least 27% for renewables, for example. And if we say already at that stage it's not done, we will try to make recommendations to member states. So this is a key step which we will need to prepare together with the member states in the next one or two years. Based on the plans, the idea is to ask for every two years for progress reports from the member state and then from the commission to assess this progress report. And this should be accompanied by a dialogue with the member states so that we can see where it's going. If by 24, 25 we see we are far away from our renewables, there will be an article which we still need to spell out as much as we can and good ideas are always welcome. What happens if we see we wouldn't reach the run? So this question about the gap filler and what measures we can introduce or we could ask member states to do that we jointly reach the target. So this is in a nutshell a little bit what we have in mind with the governance which fits very well with all the other initiatives from the renewables and energy efficiency and market design because all the reports and planning from these legislation will end up in this governance. So it's not a double working, it's all integrated probably with an electronic tool and all that and transparent. We will have websites and aggregated numbers and figures. So this is what we have in mind. The last, not legislation but a report we do every two years which will also come out in two weeks is a report on energy prices and cost. We did it for the first time two years ago. So it's in-depth analysis of all the components of wholesale and retail prices compared first between the member states and the development and then compared with the US, Japan and China. So when we did the last report in beginning of 2014, the gap for example in gas prices, US were three to four times higher in the EU than to the US. So all the energy intensive industries had a competitiveness issue paying much higher prices for energy than their competitors for example in the US. This gap is still there but it's much smaller. Anyhow, prices have gone down dramatically but this huge differences have never down a bit but to a low end. This is only one result of many in that energy price and cost report. A few things are left for next year but the big bulk of what we are doing will come this year and just to finish a little bit where we stay for Ireland. Ireland for the time being in terms of security of gas supplies obviously not in a very easy position because right now at the latest it will change with a new gas field dramatically but 96% of the gas is imported and coming from the UK. So there's so far little own production but I learned it will increase to 60% more for at least the next 10 years so the gas indigenous supply or the gas will change. There is internal energy market, a good progress, Ireland is at 8.6 in terms of renewable share and in that sense on track what is on the national target for 2014 but still has to make a lot of efforts to reach the national target for Ireland 16% for 2020. So this obviously we will monitor but this is quite important. In the internal energy market, interconnectors is a key issues inside the country and we have a specific situation with a specific single electricity market with Northern Ireland. There had been a lot of excellent work being done. There was an exemption till 2017 and I think everyone is good on track to reach also the European target model in electricity and that is excellent news and a very good and hard work for the people involved. On the electricity interconnections, obviously as much as possible will help to keep the prices. There is also some plans to go to have another electricity interconnector. It's a project of common interest with the UK but also maybe in the future with France so all this is very much welcomed from our side and as we know to come back on the renewable side there is a huge potential in Ireland which exceeds the domestic demand right now. On research and innovation, I think Ireland is also going very well so in that sense, overall the situation is quite good but there's always, and that's for all of our member states, the challenge is to keep it up and make it happen. So we will come out with our next package and probably the last big for the next coming years so in two weeks and then we have also ample possibility to discuss that with you, with the member states and the Council, European Parliament stakeholders. So hopefully we then have everything ready in the next two years and two and a half years together so in order to benefit from all that jointly. Thank you very much.