Page 11 - bnemagazine bne_December 2021_20211203.pdf

bne December 2021 Companies & Markets I 11
The decision comes a day after the agency announced that Ukraine’s natural gas company Naftogaz will participate in the certification of Nord Stream 2. As participants in the process have no veto analysts were unperturbed by the announcement, which was seen largely as a PR victory for Ukraine.
Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko said: “We welcome BNetzA’s decision to accept Naftogaz’s petition to intervene in the certification of the Nord Stream 2 operator. We have significant legal and commercial interests in the European gas market and are encouraged by the fact that BNetzA is willing to examine the issue from different angles. Our view remains: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline operator cannot be certified unless it complies with all requirements of EU competition and energy law. There can be no special treatment for Gazprom,” Vitrenko said.
“At the moment, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is endangering Germany’s and Europe’s security of supply. It is anti- competitive, and will not provide necessary additional gas transportation capacity either to Germany or to Europe. More than enough excess transit capacity exists today, but is not being used by Gazprom in its existing contracts with Ukraine’s
Poland asks its top court to rule on legality of EU’s fine over Turow mine
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Poland’s Chief Prosecutor Zbigniew Ziobro has asked the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to rule on whether the fine imposed on Poland by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) over the divisive Turow mine is legal.
The move marks another ratcheting up of Poland's dispute with the EU over whether Polish or EU law has precedence and in particular whether the government's legal reforms have damaged the rule of law. Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal
is seen as a tool to give legal backing to the government’s decisions or broader policy initiatives that have been questioned by the European Commission.
Last month the Constitutional Tribunal, whose line-up has been engineered by the government to follow its political line, ruled that several articles of the EU's founding treaty conflict with the Polish constitution. Now the tribunal is being asked to rule on whether the CJEU itself is breaching the EU treaty.
Gas Transmission System Operator. We see no justifiable commercial purpose for Nord Stream 2,” Vitrenko said in a press release.
The new decision may be an attempt to crank up the pressure on Russia after Gazprom decided not to book any additional transit capacity via Poland and Ukraine for December.
“At this point, it's a question of who blinks first. It's easy to bemoan just how foolish this move is for consumers, myself included, in Europe and it will worsen short-run energy price inflation. I'm less sure it's a mistake and think it's an intelligent bit of diplomacy, particularly with Ukraine's past offer of
a considerable discount for pipeline capacity that may be revisited,” says Birman Trickett.
Gazprom has a firm take-or-pay contract with Ukraine for 40bn cubic metres per year for 2021-24. Thus gas transit through the country is unlikely to fall below this level in the next three years. However, after the launch of NS2, Gazprom might redirect gas flows from the Ukraine transit route after 2024, VTB Capital (VTBC) said in a note.
The CJEU fined Poland €500,000 for each day it continued to allow the Turow mine to operate.
Poland and Czechia are at loggerheads over Turow, the open-cast lignite mine sitting on the border with Czechia. The Czechs argue that Poland expanded the mine in breach of the EU’s environmental laws, especially the environmental impact directive, by not consulting properly with them. Prague says that the open-cast mine is lowering the water table on the Czech side.
Czechia sued Poland in the CJEU over the mine’s impact
and secured an order from the court, telling Poland to pay €500,000 for each day of the mine’s operations. Poland refuses to pay the fine, arguing that closing down the Turow power plant – which burns lignite from the mine – would put the national power grid at risk.
The chief prosecutor, who also is Poland’s minister of justice, wants the tribunal to review one of the articles of the Treaty of the European Union – the bloc’s fundamental legal text – to
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