A legal perspective on gas solidarity

Highlights: • The EU put into place a new regulation for the security of gas supply by the end of 2017. • It is focused on a novel solidarity mechanism, which is critically assessed here. • Policy Recommendations: EU needs to clarify role and function it has vis-à-vis EU Member States in gas supply security. EU should change from 'stick' to 'carrot' approach in gas solidarity amongst Member States. -- Abstract: The EU introduced a new security of gas supply regulation in November 2017, which now replaced the security of gas supply regulation of 2010. This article is providing a critical assessment of the new Regulation (EU) 2017/1938. Many instruments of the predecessor Regulation (EU) 994/2010 will stay in place unchanged and those have been discussed elsewhere. This contribution will, hence, focus on the novelties and changes that Regulation (EU) 2017/1938 is bringing about. After some introductory remarks on the structure and the aims of Regulation (EU) 2017/1938, the current article will proceed by discussing the two main novelties of Regulation (EU) 2017/1938, which shall implement the main thrust of the new regulation: imposing obligatory solidarity between Member States in a gas crisis. These are first, the grouping of directly connected Member States into so called risk groups and second the new article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1938, which spells out concrete solidarity measures that Member States have to take. In a third step other novelties of Regulation (EU) 2017/1938 will be highlighted and critically reflected upon before the article is wrapped up with some conclusions.