Public responses received:

On 30th April 2007, ERGEG launched a public consultation on Draft Guidelines for Good Practice on Functional and Informational Unbundling -An ERGEG Public Consultation Paper.

EU regulators' preferred position is for ownership unbundling. The European Energy Regulators’ position and their reasoning is clear in the CEER comments on the European Commission’s Energy Green Paper (C06-SEM-18-03), July 2006 and in the ERGEG response to the European Commission’s Communication “An Energy Policy for Europe” (C06-BM-09-05), February 2007.

Of course, new legislation takes time to come into force. The draft guidelines on Functional and Informational Unbundling are what regulators consider to be an appropriate way to realise functional unbundling under the present legal framework.

In a subsequent step, ERGEG advoates to integrate the undunbling requirements in the draft Guidelines inot quality standards and/or Governance Codices (as proposed in the consultation paper).

The draft Guidelines make a number of recommendations for both vertically integrated companies and network companies subject to functional and informational unbundling. ERGEG invites all interested parties to comment on the issues raised in the text.

Following the end of the public consultation period, ERGEG will publish all responses to the consultation. If a respondent would like ERGEG to treat their submission with confidentiality then this must be explicitly mentioned.

Any comments should be received by 26th June 2007 and should be sent by e-mail to ergeg-unbundling@ergeg.org.

Any question to this document should in the first instance be directed to:
Mrs. Fay Geitona
E-mail: fay.geitona@ceer-eu.org
Fax +32 2 788 73 50
Tel. +32 2 788 73 30.