Faouzi Bensarsa, Adviser for energy issues, Directorate-General for External Relations of EC, and for the Commissioner for External Relations

Good morning colleagues and friends! We have heard a lot of things yesterday from the Speaker of the Parliament Mr.Yatsenyuk, from Mr. Nemyria, from representative of the President, from all the speakers, and I do not need to repeat again. I have the great honor to be maybe one of the first in this country since 1994; and all what I can tell you on a very personal basis, I trust, I trust very, very much this country, despite the political turmoil that you can have.

We have to be very pragmatic, colleagues. I think, we are moving ahead, reforms are moving ahead. Transparency is being implemented. And I have no doubt that we survived 2005-2006 crisis, we survived 2007 crisis with Belarus, we survived 2008 crisis with Georgia. At the end of the day, thanks to all of us, thanks to all of you, we do not have a major specific crisis in Ukraine – that is simply because there is an agreement among all the parties. This is not an agreement on energy security in Ukraine; it is a consensus on energy sovereignty in Ukraine, and nobody in Ukraine will discuss this issue.
Our objective within the coming years is to have Ukraine’s energy market fully integrated into the EU energy market - as simple as that. It means Ukraine will apply the whole energy architecture, and will be a full component of the EU internal market. For this Ukraine is taking the appropriate steps and the appropriate measures - various forms of tariffication, transparency, and by February next year, we would be invited, I hope, to the important investment conference on the gas transit. One message, what Ukraine needs: Ukraine needs time to implement reforms and Ukraine needs the private sector now to step in, to come here and to do business.

The latest events have shown the following – we have a new Russian administration, we have a new American administration. And what I heard yesterday evening - welcoming the US administration by President Medvedev. Or the position expressed yesterday by the Iranian President – congratulating the new US administration. And this leads me to say that in the future the challenge would be worse. I do not have an indication that the change of administrations will de-politicize the energy market. Signals are that energy security will become a huge political instrument in the commonwealth. The question of the future is different from the one in the past. You have question of resurgence of national authorities, you have the question of less intervention of the private sector in the development of the resources, you have the terrific challenge of climate change, and you have the tremendous question of the increasing demand. In all these challenges acting at bilateral level will not be enough. So, acting at bilateral level, acting at regional level and acting at multilateral level is essential to coordinate all of these. With Ukraine we are bilaterally moving very quickly, and any initiative to enhance the regional cooperation between the EU, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, this framework of cooperation that we are developing since 1995, now becomes even more important. It has to continue to harmonize market, it has to continue providing security of supply to the consumers, security of demand to the producers, and I have in mind, in particular, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan. Security of transit to the transit countries, but also a key issue now which we have to face is our common solidarity. I insist very much on solidarity. As you know, in the EU, our Heads of States have moved a step forward by having the EU solidarity mechanism included into the Lisbon Treaty. Lisbon Treaty will need to be applied for having a “family”-solidarity mechanism within the EU. What we are saying today is that this solidarity mechanism should also be open, I believe, to our neighbors from the East, and in particular, to Eastern Europe, and South Caucasus. In this context, maybe, your conference of today, is a little bit, too early because next week the Commission will come with two very important measures, the Commission will come with its third Strategic Energy review, in which measures for energy mix for infrastructure development, for diversification of roots of supplies will be clearly spent out. And next week Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner, will also propose the new Commission’s proposals on how to strengthen the Eastern Partnership in the framework of the EU- ENP. Thank you very much.

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