As previously announced, on Tuesday 25 April the European Commission launched the joint gas purchasing process for companies via the AggregateEU mechanism (see EUROPE 13167/7) in order to prepare the EU for the coming winter. It has used its collective market power to negotiate better prices with international suppliers.
“We are taking a major step towards joint purchasing of gas in the EU”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday 25 April via Twitter, following the launch of the joint gas procurement platform.
Registered companies (76 so far) have been able to submit their demand for aggregation since the morning of Tuesday 25 April and have until 2 May to do so on the website of Prisma, the service provider of AggregateEU, commissioned by the European Commission.
Some companies (11 at the moment) can also act as a ‘Central Buyer’ or ‘Agent on Behalf’ of the buyer in order to, among other things, purchase gas on behalf of other companies.
Once individual applications have been submitted, the volumes requested will be aggregated and put out to tender on the global market.
When the collective European demand matches the supply of international gas suppliers (with the exception of Russia), the participating companies will enter into negotiations with these suppliers. “Contract negotiations will take place outside the platform and are expected to start after 17 May”, explained a senior European Commission official.
Further tenders will be carried out every two months over the next 12 months and registration for companies remains open.
In the context of the emergency measures taken following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Member States have committed themselves to participate in demand aggregation for up to 15% of their national gas storage targets, representing 13.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
To see the AggregateEU platform: https://aeur.eu/f/6j6 (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)