Last week, ACER published this version of their “programming document for 2019-2021”, which includes the 2019 work plan. Starting on page 37, the document talks of the resources required to effectively  run marketing monitoring under REMIT, including license fees for monitoring software, staffing costs and also the cost of an overdue IT upgrade. The document goes on to say that:

the Agency would only be able to ensure basic data collection operations and would have to cut the licence for the Agency’s surveillance solution and IT consultancy costs for support services to reporting parties. This means that the Agency would be severely hampered in its market monitoring activities and could guarantee
neither data collection and sharing, should any unexpected event (e.g. system malfunctioning) materialise, nor the oversight of wholesale energy markets across the EU and throughout the year.

It goes on to say that:

 with REMIT fully operational, the lack of sufficient resources effectively to monitor wholesale market trading creates a serious risk of market abuse instances going undetected – and a consequent reputational risk for the Agency and all EU Institutions.

The issue of budget was also discussed at the “EMIT” forum in early September, documents for which can be found here.