The investment process in gas infrastructure is often burdened with high investment costs and the risks associated with ensuring its viability. In order to achieve the public objective of security and stability of supply and competition in the natural gas market, while limiting the investment risk on the investor side of the new gas infrastructure, regulations have been introduced to allow the investor not to apply the legal requirements set out in Article 22 of Directive 2003/55/EC (amended by Article 36 of Directive 2009/73/EC) for a specified period of time and after fulfilment of the indicated requirements. The exemption granted by the European Commission to the OPAL gas pipeline by the decision of 28 October 2016 raises doubts as to the legal basis of such exemption and the fulfilment of the substantive conditions governing its granting. The article analyses the decision by criticizing the grounds and merits of its adoption.
Historically, different market conditions of member states of the European Union led to the situation in which the security of supply was within the responsibility of EU members. The 2009 gas crisis resulted in the integration of national polices in this regard through the creation of a framework of common EU mechanisms in case of crisis. Regu-lation 994/2010 has only partly moved towards this aim. It indicated which elements of the system influence the security of supply. Additional regulatory measures should focus on further enhancement of some of the existing measures and enclose new parameters to the assessment of security level. The new model should be more focused on the whole-sale market and the market assessment of security. The purpose of this article is to diagnose market and legal conditions of security of supply in Poland and in the EU, and to propose a common new approach to security of supply and relevant actions in case of gas crisis in the European Union.
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