Judgment of the General Court in case T-883/16

Press and Information General Court of the European Union PRESS RELEASE n° 107/19 Luxembourg, 10 September 2019 Judgment in Case T-883/16 Poland v Commission The General Court annuls the Commission decision approving the modification of the exemption regime for the operation of the OPAL gas pipeline That decision was adopted in breach of the principle of energy solidarity The gas pipeline Ostseepipeline-Anbindungsleitung ﴾OPAL) is the terrestrial section to the west of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. Its entry point is located in Germany and its exit point is in the Czech Republic. In 2009, the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA, the German regulatory authority) notified the Commission of two decisions that exempted the capacities for cross-border transmission of the planned OPAL pipeline from the application of the rules on third party access and tariff regulation laid down in Directive 2003/55. 1 Those decisions concerned the shares belonging to the two owners of the OPAL pipeline. 2 The same year, the Commission adopted a decision by which it requested the BNetzA to modify its decisions by adding certain conditions. 3 Under those conditions, in particular, a dominant undertaking, such as Gazprom, could reserve only 50% of the cross-border capacities of the OPAL pipeline, unless it released onto the market a volume of gas of 3 billion m³/year on that pipeline (‘the gas release programme’). In accordance with those three decisions of 2009, the capacities of the OPAL...