From 1 July to 31 December 2011, for the first time in history of Polish membership in the European Union, Poland was presiding over the Council of the European Union.

Poland is among the countries who find EU energy policy extremely important. Therefore the priorities of the Polish Presidency included a postulate for strengthening the EU external energy policy and for improving energy solidarity between Member States in order to ensure the energy security in Europe.

Energy Regulatory Office actively participated in the tasks associated with preparing and exercising the Polish leadership, supporting the realization of energy priorities of the Presidency through strengthening the idea of creating an integrated energy market by 2014, promoting competition and role of regulators, as well as supporting projects in the field of the energy efficiency, including the implementation of smart grids.

In September ERO hosted the meeting of the CEER Retail Markets and Customer Working Group. Experts on consumer affairs from different Member States came to Warsaw to continue the work in strengthening EU energy consumers position.

In October we co-organized and hosted the high-level energy conference in Cracow devoted to the prospects of creating the integrated and competitive EU energy market. The conference was accompanied by CEER General Assembly and ACER Board of Regulators with the participation of the representatives of European regulatory authorities.
The last of the meetings was the Polish-Danish workshop that presented an opportunity for a debate on the energy efficiency - the common priority for both Polish and Danish Presidencies. Denmark took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on 1 January 2012 and is planning to ambitiously support the development of the EU energy policy, continuing the achievements of the Polish Presidency in this field.

The end of the Polish Presidency does not mean the end of activities aimed at increasing the energy security and creating the Internal Energy Market (IEM). Ahead of us there is still a lot of work associated with the implementation of the new regulation on the market transparency (REMIT) and with preparing guidelines and grid codes that will facilitate development of the IEM as well as follow-up work on the proposal of the new directive on energy efficiency and regulation regarding trans-European energy infrastructure. The experience gained during the Polish Presidency will be of help in completing the current and future tasks.