Brussels, 24/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - In its determination to complete the internal energy market by 2014, the European Commission is imposing penalties on countries that drag their feet.
On Thursday 24 January, the European Commission referred Bulgaria, Estonia and the United Kingdom to the European Court of Justice for incomplete transposition of Community rules on the internal energy market. The three countries only partially implemented the 2009/72/EC “electricity” and 2009/73/EC “gas” directives from the third liberalisation package. Member states were supposed to have transposed these two directives by 3 March 2011.
“The EU needs an internal energy market to tackle Europe's energy and climate challenges and to ensure affordable and secure energy supplies to households and businesses. Delays in implementation of the EU Internal Energy Market rules have negative effects on all players and are therefore not acceptable”, said EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger.
For Bulgaria, for each of the two partially transposed Directive, the Commission proposes a daily penalty of €8,448. For Estonia, the Commission proposes daily penalties of €5,068.8 for the partially transposed electricity directive and of €4,224 for the partially transposed gas directive. For the United Kingdom, the Commission requests the Court impose a daily penalty payment of €148,177.92 for each of the partially transposed directives. If the Court finds in favour of the Commission, the daily penalty will be paid from the date of the judgment until the transposition is complete. The final amount of the daily penalties will be decided by the Court. (EH/transl.fl)