There’s no time to waste when it comes to energy. Andris Piebalgs, EU commissioner for energy, launches this message to the 27 EU member states at the end of the presentation, held today in Brussels, of a report on the power outage of 4th November 2006, which had affected millions of people in France (the country that suffered the most, with 5 million people ending up in complete darkness), Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. "Europe should learn a lesson from these event that left millions of people without electricity states the commissioner and develop stricter security regulations for energy suppliers". After the event of last Autumn, the Union for the Coordination of Electricity Supply (Ucte) decided to conduct a survey on the causes of the event. "The survey conducted by Ucte suggests the power outage may have been caused by three main factors": the non activation of any specific security measure by the German electricity supplier E.ON Netz; non coordination with the other European electricity suppliers; "finally, the lack of appropriate investments in the grid is partly to blame". As to this, Piebalgs confirms "the appropriateness of the position of the Commission, which thinks the member states should join forces to ensure secure electricity supplies across the EU".
