The French Presidency of the Council of the European Union submitted to the Member States, on Thursday 5 May, a new draft compromise on the proposed regulation aimed at guaranteeing a sufficient level of gas reserves in the EU and thus strengthening the Union’s capacity to deal with possible disruptions to its gas supply, such as a halt in Russian deliveries.
Like the previous draft compromise (see EUROPE 12938/2), the French document retains the obligation for Member States to ensure that underground gas storage facilities on their territory are filled to at least 80% of their capacity by 1 November 2022 and 90% by 1 November of the following years.
However, it deletes the Presidency’s earlier proposal that storage facilities in one Member State which are primarily used as a source of gas supply for consumers in one or more other Member States be excluded from the filling target.
Filling trajectories
Paris maintains its proposal to delete the intermediate indicative filling targets provided for in the text presented by the European Commission (see EUROPE 12917/7).
As an alternative, the Presidency suggests that each Member State with storage facilities should send the Commission a draft trajectory for filling its facilities by a certain date for the year 2022 (not yet fixed in the draft compromise) and by 30 September at the latest from 2023.
On the basis of this information and taking into account the assessment of the ‘Gas Coordination Group’, the Commission would then be required to adopt implementing acts to set each Member State’s individual filling trajectory.
Taking into account gas consumption
The Presidency also proposes to link the storage obligation to gas consumption in the Member States, as some EU countries with large storage capacities would be disproportionately affected by this obligation.
Thus, the filling target for countries in which storage facilities are located “should be limited to a volume corresponding to 35% of their annual gas consumption in the past 5 years”. This is a slightly different wording compared to the previous draft compromise.
For those countries for which the filling target is reduced to 35% of their consumption, the intermediate filling trajectory targets should be reduced accordingly, the French document goes on to say.
The filling target for these Member States would be further reduced by the volume supplied to third countries during the reference period 2016-2021, if the average volume supplied was above 15 TWh per year during the gas de-stocking period (October - April).
Inclusion of LNG in the filling target
While the new draft compromise retains the proposal to allow Member States to partially meet the 90% target by counting liquefied natural gas (LNG) stored in their LNG facilities, it changes the conditions associated with this possibility.
Two conditions now need to be met: (1) have LNG storage capacity representing annually more than 4% of the average national consumption of the last 5 years; (2) have imposed on gas suppliers the obligation to store minimum volumes of gas in LNG facilities.
Burden sharing
There is also a change in the burden sharing between Member States.
According to the new draft compromise, arrangements between EU countries without underground storage facilities and those with them should provide for the use, by 1 November at the latest, of storage volumes corresponding to at least 15% of the average annual gas consumption over the last 5 years of the Member State without underground storage facilities.
Sunset clause
In order to signify the temporary nature of the regulation, the draft compromise introduces a sunset clause according to which the regulation should expire on 31 December 2026 at the latest.
Next steps
The Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) will meet on 11 May with the aim of adopting a common position (‘general approach’) in order to start interinstitutional negotiations (trilogues) on the 16 (provisional date) and to reach an agreement with the European Parliament at the end of the trilogue.
On the Parliament side, the next meeting of the negotiating team will be held on Tuesday 10 May.
See the draft compromise: https://aeur.eu/f/1jj (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)