BERLIN, August 25. /TASS/. A German district court in Dusseldorf has dismissed the complaint filed by Nord Stream AG company and refused to exclude the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from the application of the renewed EU Gas Directive, court’s spokesman Peter Schutz told a TASS correspondent by phone.
"The complaint was rejected," he said. He did not answer additional questions, suggesting to wait for the official press release.
Earlier, Nord Stream AG, the operator of the project, tried to challenge the decision of the German Federal Network Agency.
In May 2020, the German regulator denied the operator’s request dated January 10, 2020, to exclude the pipeline from the application of the updated EU Gas Directive. The federal agency was guided by the fact that the gas pipeline allegedly did not meet the required criterion - it was not completed by the required date, that is, by May 23, 2019.
In turn, Nord Stream 2 AG noted that the concept of "project completion" should be considered broader than simply from the point of view of construction and technical processes. According to the company, one should take into account the fact that by the time the new rules came into force, billions of dollars in investments had already been made, taking into account the previous legal situation. The German agency rejected this argument, and the Dusseldorf court has taken its side.
The court's decision has nothing to do with the construction process of Nord Stream 2, which should be completed this year.
About the updated directive
The basic requirement of the EU's Third Energy Package is unbundling. It implies the need to split European energy corporations into structures that produce, generate and trade energy resources, on the one hand, and independent operators of energy transportation systems (pipelines, power lines, etc.), on the other.
The Third Energy Package also obliges an operator to reserve up to 50% of its gas pipeline's capacity for pumping fuel from alternative suppliers.
The revised Gas Directive was agreed in record time early last year.
The changes imply that the norms of the Third Energy Package should also be extended to pipelines passing in the maritime economic zone of the EU countries.
Meanwhile, the question of applying the revised Gas Directive remains open. Although the amendments entered into force in June 2018, many EU countries did not have time to take them into account in their national legislation, which opens up plenty of opportunity for challenging their application in court.