Commission proposes update to Gas Directive.

The main objective is to improve the Gas Directive that is now in place (2009/73/EC) in order to achieve the goals of the EU gas market and meet the EU’s Energy Union, which is a key priority of the European Commission. The main principles of the EU energy legislation are that the pipelines entering the EU territory follow the EU rules, following the tariff regulation, ownership unbundling and transparency. Moreover, this improvement will contribute also to the objective of ensuring energy security in the EU.

These proposed changes are important to the EU as the dependency on imported natural gas has been growing and can be worsened, the domestic gas production is not only growing but decreasing. In 2016 the imports were 12% higher than in 2015, being Russia the biggest gas importer to the EU (42% of the total in 2016). The proposed changes will need to be approved by the European Parliament and Council before they enter into force.