BRUSSELS, October 30. /TASS/. The Bulgarian authorities independently decided to raise the tariff for transit of Russian gas, representative of the European Commission (EC) Tim McPhie told a briefing on Monday.
"This is a national measure," he said. According to him, this measure has nothing to do with the EU sanctions against Russia.
McPhie mistakenly mentioned that the EU has "12 packages in place" although the 12th package is still to be approved by the EU member states.
"Those [sanctions] considering energy cover both oil and coal embargos but there is no sanction can be placed on gas imports. But, of course, in the context of our Repower EU plan we are committed to reduce imports of all Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible," the EC official said.
McPhie said that the European Commission "takes note of this recently enacted measure from Bulgaria concerning its gas imports"
"We are in close contact with Bulgaria and other affected countries to assess and to discuss the possible effects of this measure," he added. The EC official stressed that the use of revenues from the new tariff is "really a question to Bulgarian authorities."
On October 13, the Bulgarian parliament introduced an additional tariff of 20 levs (about 10 euros) per MWh for the transit of Russian gas flowing through the TurkStream pipeline and its branches to Serbia and then to Hungary.
On October 17, Serbia and Hungary prepared a joint statement indicating that Bulgaria's decision to increase the rate for gas transit from Russia is a hostile move towards them and also "threatens the security of energy supply" of the two countries.
On October 26, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev appealed to the Constitutional Court in connection with the introduction of additional payment for the transit of Russian gas, noting that the adopted law violates a number of provisions of the constitution, the principles of guarantees of property rights and free economic initiative. According to the president, the introduction of an additional payment does not comply with the principle of the legality of taxes and fees, since the legal status of the "contribution" is unclear, whether it is a tax, fee or duty.