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Jean-Claude Depail

Jean-Claude Depail

Thu, 2013-05-16 07:55

• general
• trade

Jean-Claude Depail, president of Gas Infrastructure Europe since 2010, is a member of the executive committee of GDF Suez.

He spoke to EurActiv Senior Editor Georgi Gotev.

The GIE annual conference 2013 takes place simultaneously with a special EU summit dedicated to energy, on 22 May. This is probably a coincidence. What messages would you like to hear from the EU summit?

“Currently China is not at the centre of the radar,” said Lamy, the honorary president of the Paris-based think tank Notre Europe–Jacques Delors Institute.

Speaking at the launch of a new report on the EU’s external action, compiled by 16 European think tanks, Lamy stressed that 90% of European growth in the next 10 years will originate outside Europe, with one-third of it originating in China alone.

Authorities have sharpened scrutiny of financial benchmarks around the world since slapping large fines on some of the world's biggest banks for rigging interest rate benchmarks.

The European Commission said on Tuesday (14 May) it was investigating major oil companies over suspected anti-competitive agreements related to submission of prices to leading oil pricing agency Platts, a unit of McGraw Hill Group .

Gauri Khandekar is a researcher and head of the Agora Asia-Europe programme at FRIDE, a European think tank for global action based in Madrid, Spain.

European Union and ASEAN senior officials will be meeting in Vietnam on 14-15 May to take stock of bilateral relations. The Bandar Seri Bagwan Plan of Action signed last year between the two partners to strengthen the EU-ASEAN Enhanced Partnership (2013-2017) will be amongst the key issues.

EU commissioners backed EU Trade Chief Karel De Gucht's proposal to levy the provisional duties by 6 June and make Chinese solar exports less attractive, two officials said.

Shares in German manufacturers SolarWorld, Phoenix Solar and Centrotherm rose sharply, while China's Suntech fell heavily.

The document, dated 7 February, would establish a ‘fair and equitable treatment’ obligation that outlaws any “breach of legitimate expectations of investors,” according to text proposed by the EU. 

These breaches could be triggered by changes to incentives or government policy, and environmentalists fear that bans on fracking by companies that claim to operate out of Canada might be caught in the net.

Ottawa and Brussels started negotiations to open up access to each other's economies in 2009 and a deal was supposed to be concluded by the end of 2011.

That deadline was pushed back to the end of 2012 but the two sides are still trying to resolve differences over how much beef Canada can export and how much freedom EU companies will have to bid for Canadian government contracts.