|
Today, March 13, Aigars Kalvītis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, sent a letter to Andris Piebalgs, European Union (EU) Commissioner for Energy, expressing approval of the successful work of Commission services in developing the Green Paper on Energy. The document provides further development trends of Europes energy sector and at the same time also outlines the main guidelines for development of the energy sector in the coming decades. The letter notes that preparation of the Green Paper on Energy marks the beginning of a process that must be followed by legislative initiatives and concrete projects, but more importantly the outlined ideas must come to life, and they must ensure energy independence of European Union countries. The Prime Minister in his letter stresses that after going through the Green Paper I must acknowledge that the Commission has to great extent taken into consideration the problematic issues I had noted in my letter to the President of the Commission and you on January 31 this year. Furthermore, the Green Paper precisely reflects also the problems mentioned in the joint declaration of the Prime Ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia signed in Trakai on February 27. The Prime Minister informs that the Government of Latvia already in the near future will discuss guidelines of development of the energy sector of Latvia, which greatly correspond to the positions included in the Green Paper. During the European Council of March 23 and 24 the energy issue will be among the central issues of discussion, and I hope that at the level of heads of state and government we will manage to agree already on concrete initiatives in the energy sector, which would both promote security of supply of energy resources and also mark those issues where common EU legislation must be adopted. At the end of the letter the Prime Minister stresses: Mr. Piebalgs, you can count on the support of the Government of Latvia in the process of development of the Common EU Energy Policy, which will promote the process of integration of the Baltic States into the EU energy system.
|
