18. Believes that the forthcoming Commission ‘Blueprint for a North Sea offshore grid’, together with other regional initiatives such as the ‘Mediterranean Ring’ and the ‘Baltic Interconnection Project’, should become one of the building blocks for developing a European Supergrid; calls on the Member States and the Commission to set aside the resources required for its development;

Notes that, in order to guarantee supply security, the development of RES with variable feed-in will necessitate a flexible balancing of fluctuations and a flexible back-up through an integrated and interconnected European electricity grid that allows cross-border trading, demand response systems, energy storage and flexible power plants; calls on the Commission to assess whether there is a capacity issue in the EU and to determine the amount of firm capacity that can be provided by variable RES in an integrated EU power system, as well as its potential impact on generation adequacy; agrees with Commission’s analysis that the developme ...[+++]nt of reserve capacity mechanisms entails substantial costs and may distort price signals; notes that there is an increasing need for a stable policy framework to provide economic guarantees concerning the availability of these reserves as well as for system and balancing services; rejects the concept of competition for subsidies between energy sources and calls for an energy market design tailored to the Union’s long-term energy and climate policy objectives, which makes it possible to integrate RES technologies into the internal energy market, but acknowledges that state aid has historically been necessary in the development of all energy sources;

4. The function of European Route Network Design shall be executed without prejudice to the reservations or restrictions of a volume of airspace for exclusive or specific use by the Member States.

The Energy Sector Inquiry has provided an overview of European TSOs’ practice with respect to capacity reservation contracts for the provision of balancing services.

the reception, preparation, storage, maintenance and distribution to the members of the European Network of GMO laboratories of the appropriate positive and negative control samples, subject to assurance given by such members of the respect of the confidential nature of the data received where applicable;

That role is now earmarked for the European Migration Network.