The International Network
for Sustainable Energy

EU Energy Policy:
- Directive of Natural Gas Security

Updated: June 2010

Securing our Energy Future (follow-up) 2009
In 2009, the Commission had a new proposal for the Second Strategic Energy Review – Securing our Energy Future (follow-up). It proposes to strengthen the EU system for gas supply security and proposed new regulations for prevent and mitigate of potential disruptions to gas supplies.
In addition, the Commission proposed a greater transparency in the development of the energy infrastructure to look at potential risks of the planned and ongoing projects.
Related documents on the EC website.

Content
The Directive establishes a common framework within which the countries must define general security of supply policies. The main points are as follows:
- Countries must ensure that supplies for household customers are protected to an appropriate extent. If an adequate interconnect is available, countries may achieve the security of supply standards using gas storage facilities located within another country.
- Countries may require the industry to set indicative minimum targets for
a possible future contribution of gas storage to security of supply.
- the Commission must monitor the developments on the gas market on
the basis of reports from the countries;
- A Gas Coordination Group is established for security of supply measures;
- The countries must adopt and publish national emergency provisions;
- Rules are established to be used in the event of a major supply disruption with the foreseeable length of at least eight weeks;
- In the event of a major supply disruption, the Directive provides for a three step approach. The first step involves the reactions of the industry. The next step is that Member States must take measures to solve the supply disruption. Only if the measures taken at stage one and two have failed will appropriate measures be taken at Community level.

Status
The amended proposal was approved by the council of ministers of the EU countries April 26, 2004. It is now Council Directive 2004/67/EC. It entered into force May 19 and must be implemented by May 19, 2006.

April 20, 2004 the Parliament agreed to amendments of the directive, including the removal of some provisions of harmonization of EU gas industry.

The council of minister and the Parliament made several changes to the directive to minimize harmonization to the necessary for security of supply. They also and moved the legal basis, thus it is no longer under co-decision procedure.

The initial proposal from the Commission (COM2002/488) came November 11, 2002.

Read the Parliaments Procedure at wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/oeil/oeil_ViewDNL.ProcViewCTX?lang=2&procid=7846

Read the directive text

A Regulation on Conditions of Access to Gas Transmission Networks (to promote cross-border trade in gas, to strengthen the gas market).

Description
The proposed regulation aims at completing the Internal Gas Market Directive (2003/55/EC) by setting detailed rules for a number of aspects relevant for third-party access to Member States' gas transmission networks. It should be seen as a parallel to Regulation (EC) 1228/2003 on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity, adopted in June last year. The proposal is referred to as (COM 2003 - 741) and the final act as Regulation 1775/ 2005.

The directive entered into force November 23, 2005 and was to be implemented by the EU countries by July 1, 2006

The proposal was adopted by the EU countries as legal act of September 28, 2005.
Next step is a second reading by the Parliament, March 8, 2005.
The proposal was discussed by the EU Parliament April 20, 2004, where a resolution was adopted calling for amendments.
The EU energy ministers agreed a common position November 11, 2003.
The EU Energy ministers reached a political agreement at their meeting June 10-11, 2003.

Read the Parliaments Procedure (enter above reference)