After many hesitations and uncertainties, the item was finally put on the agenda of the very last Coreper I meeting of the Bulgarian Presidency on June 20 th, but very little seems to have happened after that in terms of progress in the legislative process. After several intense discussions within the Energy Working Party under the Bulgarian Presidency (January- July 2018) and unable to resolve several ‘pending issues’, in June 2018 the Working Party asked COREPER to ‘ provide guidance for further technical work’ on the proposal.
On the other hand, states such as Eastern European countries together with Sweden, Denmark and the UK have been rather supportive of the Commission proposal arguing that it would bring more clarity and would extend EU law. Unsurprisingly, this proposal triggered an animated debate within the Council where Member States such as Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands argued that such a revision was not needed.
#NS2 GERMANY STUDY FULL#
The proposal foresees to expand some provisions of EU energy law – such as unbundling and third party access – to cross-border pipelines between Member States and third countries, it establishes stricter conditions for derogations and exemptions for pipelines and strengthens the role of the Commission which would be responsible to sign intergovernmental agreements with third countries and would also have considerable powers of scrutiny in ensuring full compliance with EU law. Having failed, so far, to obtain a mandate, the Commission then issued a proposal aimed to revise existing EU energy rules – namely Directive 2009/73/EC concerning common rules for the internal market in natural gas– by making them applicable to all existing and future gas pipelines between the EU and third countries. In an attempt to make sure that the pipeline, if built, would comply to EU energy market rules, in June 2017, the European Commission asked the Council a mandate to negotiate a specific regime with Russia.
In doing so, it might reduce the importance of Ukraine as a transit country. If built, the project will double the amount of energy that transits from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream 2 is owned by Russian Gazprom together with a consortium of five European energy companies: Uniper and Wintershall (Germany), Royal Dutch Shell (UK – Netherlands), Engie (France), and OMV (Austria). But why is Nord Stream 2 so controversial and why does it seem to put at risk the very functioning of the Internal Energy Market as argued by the Commission? Source: In addition, it would endanger existing transport routes via Ukraine.
According to the European Commission, ‘the Nord Stream 2 project does not contribute to the Energy Union objectives of giving access to new supply sources, routes or suppliers it could allow a single supplier to further strengthen its position on the European Union gas market and lead to a further concentration of supply routes’. Nord Stream 2 is possibly one of the most debated and controversial topics in energy policy and it has been so since feasibility studies for this project started in 2011.