Press Release: Internal energy market: Commission refers Bulgaria, Estonia and the United Kingdom to Court for failing to fully transpose EU rules

The European Commission is referring Bulgaria, Estonia and the United Kingdom to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to fully transpose the EU internal energy market rules.

As of 24 January 2013, Bulgaria, Estonia and the UK have only partially transposed the Electricity and Gas Directives. The Directives had to be transposed by the Member States by 3 March 2011.
For Bulgaria, for each partially transposed Directive, the Commission proposes a daily penalty of €8448. For Estonia, the Commission proposes daily penalties of €5068.8 for the partially transposed Electricity Directive and of €4224 for the partially transposed Gas Directive. For the United Kingdom, the Commission requests the Court to impose a daily penalty payment of €148177.92 for each of the partially transposed Directives.

The penalties proposed take into account the duration and the gravity of the infringement. In case of an affirmative judgement of the Court, the daily penalty is to be paid from the date of the judgment until the transposition is completed. The final amount of the daily penalties will be decided by the Court.