AGREEMENT IN CONCILIATION ON SAVE II AND ALTENER II ENERGY PROGRAMMES.

The Council of Ministers and European Parliament finally reached a consensus on December 9 on financing the SAVE II (promotion of energy efficiency) and ALTENER II (promotion of renewable energy sources) programmes for the 1998-2002 period. The budgets finally earmarked amount to Euro 66 million for SAVE and Euro 77 million for ALTENER. The parliamentary debate and the vote on the outcome of this conciliation procedure may be added to the plenary agenda for February 2000.

The European Parliament delegation to the Conciliation Committee had proposed that Parliament approve the agreement reached in the conciliation procedure on these energy programmes. At the initial meeting of the Conciliation Committee on November 11, the Council had proposed a Euro 1.9 million increase for both programmes. This was unacceptable to Parliament. This time, the Council proposed an overall increase of Euro 5 million: 2 million for the SAVE programme and 3 million for the ALTENER programme. The...