What changed between the plenary report and the adopted text

Changed:3. Points out that the completion of the EU’s energy market integration will save up to EUR 40 billion annually, and that a 50 % increase in cross-border electricity trade could increase the EU’s annual GDP by 0.10,1 %;

Changed:5. Reiterates that, by 2030, the Union needs to invest around EUR375 to 425billion425 billion in distribution grids, and, overall, EUR 584 billion, in transmission and distribution electricity grids, including cross-border interconnectors and the adaptation of distribution grids to the energy transition;

Changed:6. Notes with concern that in 2023 the costs of managing transmission electricity grid congestion in the EU were EUR 4.24,2 billion and continue to rise, and that curtailment is an obstacle to increasing the share of renewable energy sources; notes that this figure does not include the distribution electricity grid; stresses that in 2023 nearly 30 TWh of renewable electricity were curtailed across several Member States due to insufficient grid capacity; further notes the sharp increase in annual hours of negative electricity prices, rising from 154 in 2018 to 1 031 as of September 2024, largely driven by grid congestion at borders, and the lack of sufficient storage, flexibility and demand response in the electricity market to temporally match variable renewable electricity supply with electricity demand; stresses that addressing these issues could help to absorb surplus supply, thereby maximising the use of existing grid infrastructure, but that existing market and regulatory frameworks often fail to provide adequate incentives for achieving this;

Changed:18. Welcomes the EU DSO Entity’s report on good practices on Distribution Network Development Plans (DNDPs), which calls on the Member States to include cost-benefit analyses in their DNDPs, in order to evaluate investment opportunities; urges the Commission to develop guidelines based on this report, in cooperation with the EU DSO Entity, to harmonise and increase transparency of national development planning for distribution grids, to publish a European overview of the DNDPs and to require all transmission and distribution operators to provide energy regulators with the necessary data about their current and future grid hosting capacity information and grid planning, to enable energy regulators to properly scrutinise grid planning; calls on the Member States to implement Article 31(3) of Directive (EU) 2024/1711, which requests grid operators to publish information on the capacity available in their area of operation, in order to ensure transparency and enable stakeholders to make informed investment decisions; calls on the Commission to develop a centralised online repository for all transmission plans and DNDPs;

Changed:33. Stresses that this forthcoming revision of the Public Procurement Directives will allow the inclusion of sustainability, resilience and European preference criteria in EU public procurement processes for strategic sectors, in line with the provisions set out in Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1735; calls for grids and related technologies to be explicitly recognised as strategic sectors, to ensure their eligibility under the revised framework; underlines that strengthening European preference in public procurement processes is essential for reducing the EU’s dependence on non-EU suppliers, enhancing supply chain security, and fostering a resilient EU industrial base capable of supporting the energy transition; welcomes the introduction by the European Investment Bank (EIB) of a ‘Grids Manufacturing Package’ to support the European supply chain with at least EUR 1.51,5 billion in counter-guarantees for grid component manufacturers; calls for further similar financial instruments to be developed to provide long-term investment certainty and to accelerate the scaling-up of European production capacity;

Changed:35. Observes with concern that the budget allocated under CEF-E has been insufficient to expedite all PCI and PMI categories; notes that with a EUR 5.845,84 billion budget for 2021-2027, the programme has restricted capacity and may struggle to keep pace with investment needs; calls on the Commission and the Member States to significantly increase the CEF-E envelope and the percentage of CEF-E funds dedicated to electricity infrastructure as a separate adequate resource, when proposing the next multiannual financial framework (MFF), and to ensure that projects both at the distribution and at the transmission levels with an EU added value are eligible for budget allocated under CEF-E; encourages the Commission to further explore co-financing possibilities between CEF-E and the Renewable Energy Financing Mechanism;

Changed:36. States that EU funding is predominantly allocated to transmission grids with relatively insignificant allocations to distribution grids, despite their significant role in the EU energy transition, demonstrated by the fact that, between 2014 and 2020, CEF-E funded around EUR 5.35,3 billion worth of projects, of which around EUR 1.71,7 billion went to transmission grids and EUR 237 million to smart distribution grids; notes that the last PCI list only contained five smart electricity projects;

Changed:Q. whereas the electricity system blackout experienced in the Iberian Peninsula and parts of France on 28 April 2025 illustratedillustrated, among other things, how important it is to increase the energy grid’s resilience by ensuring that it is well maintained, protected and balanced at all times, including through flexible system services and enhanced cross-border interconnections, to allow for an agile recovery in the event of system failure;