Proposition 51K2711

Projet de loi établissant un prélèvement visant à lutter contre la non-utilisation d'un site de production d'électricité par un producteur.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

Oct. 16, 2006

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

special tax electrical energy power plant energy production energy supply fine

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld MR FN VB

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Discussion ¶

Nov. 23, 2006 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Karine Lalieux, the rapporteur, refers to her written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, with the first draft law, a new tax is introduced on electricity sites that are not or are no longer exploited or are underused.

It is a tax of 11,000 euros per megawatt hour and the yield is estimated at 70 million euros annually. This is not an insufficient income in this period of budget deficits.

In the market there is a dominant player, Electrabel. Electrabel may escape that tax if it sells those underused or unused sites to other producers. The mandatory provision by Electrabel of unused or underused sites to third parties was already proposed by the government following Pax Electrica I, in particular the acquisition of Electrabel by Suez.

In the meantime, Electrabel has offered three sites for sale. Beringen would have been sold to the German E.ON and Marchienne-au-Pont and Sint-Pieters-Leeuw/Drogenbos would also have been marketed. The Spanish Endesa had an interest in both sites but I have heard that the negotiations would have jumped off in the meantime because the sites are not interesting because of the difficult connection to the network. The minister said this week that the negotiations with Endesa were still underway, but I read today that they would have jumped off.

We agree on the principle of making available unused or underused electricity sites. However, we read this law together with the Electricity Act in which the majority agreed last year that all costs and taxes by the electricity producers may be included in the electricity price. Our fear now is that Electrabel will not be the requesting party for more competition and therefore will be more likely to pay the tax that it can transfer to the price per kilowatt hour.

This law can only work if Electrabel is willing to accept more competition and make interesting sites available to other competitors. Furthermore, it should be willing to make those sites available at a reasonable price. If the demand price is too high, other producers will show little interest in these available sites.

Mr. Minister, what I say here is a repeat of what I said in the committee. We fear that the new tax may be an interesting budgetary operation for the State Treasury, but that it will yield little in terms of increasing competition in the electricity market.

Since we agree with the principle but are not naive in the implementation, we refrain from the first draft.

The second draft includes the possibility of appealing against the fine and we will therefore approve that draft. There will then be a different vote. For the first draft we will abstain and we will approve the second draft.

I will have two names for the designs.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I will limit myself to stating the reasons for these bills.

There is a shortage of capacity in Belgium. It is that capacity that is necessary to install the competition. There are three methods that are used together.

First, take care of the interconnection. This means providing the connections with abroad in such a way that electricity can be exchanged between different countries. This is what we do in a five-country dialogue, first of all, as pioneers in the European Union.

Second, establish a power agent. In the meantime, this week has begun. That is the Belpex exchange; there the power is traded.

Third, the tax on unused sites.

Unfortunately, there are no magic remedies. We must use them all together.

As a change in connection with the discussion we had at the time we dealt with the draft laws, I can report that it is effective so that one of the three sites was transferred, in particular that of Edingen. For Marchienne-au-Pont and Drogenbos, the negotiations have now jumped off. However, this does not prevent these sites from joining the under-used or unused sites and will therefore be subject to the tax.

The only danger that exists is that it is said that Electrabel will roll in a comfortable situation and ⁇ will pay the fee to avoid competition. This is a ⁇ high amount of 11,000 euros per megawatt. So that is a huge amount, certain and fixed if we look at the actual cost of a Eurowatt of electricity produced. However, this is an additional given. This is also new since this week. We now know every day exactly the trade and what a megawatt costs and means. The stock market is there. Assuming that Electrabel at a certain moment says that one takes the bluts with the buil and adds the 11,000 euros per megawatt, then that is immediately translated into the cost price, in such a shrinking way that everyone will see that it is the ordinary recovery.

In other words, in any case, there is already a pressure agent, apart from the promises made on the part of Suez-Electrabel within the merger. They have announced that they will allow three players to enter the market with a similar portfolio. This, of course, means that capacity will have to be released. This will also include the underused or unused capacity.

Mrs. Creyf, I agree with you in the sense that great vigilance is required. It will not be a magic remedy; that is clear. I hope that the work will be of such nature that we can effectively, through the introduction of this law, force the former monopoly to release the portion of capacity that it does not use, and for which permissions were granted, also to other players on the market.

Mr. Minister, I thank you for your response. I can follow you for a large part. Indeed, initiatives have been taken and steps have been taken to improve market performance and reduce player dominance. However, the way in which the first three less or unused sites have been made available makes us somewhat hesitant, especially since the negotiations on two of the three sites have failed. So I hope that the heavy fine is an incentive for Electrabel, but will not be transferred to the consumer. That would, of course, be a bad evolution for everyone.

I would not blindly look at the first sales of sites, because then they were sites designated by Electrabel itself. We all remember the criticisms that existed at the time with the candidate producers who said they were not the most interesting. They knew there was much more interesting. Because of the fact that one will now impose a tax on all unused sites, one will at some point have to let the free market play in that area. I hope that at that point also sites that are more interesting than the first offered will be eligible to be assigned to new competitors.