EU move closer to approving amendments to EU gas directive

BRUSSELS, Feb 13 (PRIME) -- The European Commission, the E.U. Council, and the European Parliament have coordinated amendments to the E.U. Gas Directive, which the E.U. lawmakers are to approve in a few months, the European Commission said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We just agreed new rules to ensure that pipelines with third countries comply with E.U. law - improving the functioning of the E.U. gas market and strengthening solidarity,” European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete said on his Twitter page.

The commission suggested the amendments in November 2017 with the goal of applying the E.U. energy legislation – including third-party access, tariff regulation, ownership unbundling and transparency – to all pipelines running from the E.U. to other countries and vice versa. Previously, the regulation covered only pipes that run on the E.U. territory.

The agreement “ensures that the provisions of the Gas Directive are applied on E.U. territory (land and sea) and provides for effective oversight to ensure the application of E.U. internal market rules by the national authorities supervised by the Commission,” the commission’s statement read.

“Following this provisional political agreement, the text of the Directive will be prepared in all E.U. languages and will have to be formally approved by the European Parliament and the Council. Once endorsed by both co-legislators in the coming months, the new law will be published in the Official Journal of the Union. The Directive will have to be transposed into national law within 9 months,” the commission said.

James Watson, secretary general of Eurogas, said that the amendments will cover Russia’s Nord Stream-2 natural gas pipeline, but that it will not ultimately stop the project.

European Policy Centre’s analyst Marco Guili told PRIME that the amendments may come into force already in 2019, but they are unlikely to hurt construction of the pipeline.

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Gazprom will implement the project together with Germany’s E.ON and BASF, Royal Dutch Shell, OMV, and France’s Engie.

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