New European Transmission System - Rationale

Rationale

Central and South-East Europe is characterized by inadequate gas infrastructure, including lack of interconnections between the networks and insufficient storage. For historic reasons, most gas pipelines in Central and South-East Europe run east-west only, without the level of inter-connectivity found in the West of the European Union. These characteristics result in a fragmented and inefficient gas market and greater concerns over security of supply. Improving inter-connectivity, and allowing gas to be moved more easily to wherever it is needed, will make a major contribution towards improving security of supply.

To realize NETS, the harmonization of energy policies and regulatory frameworks are required which is a sizable task for the energy policy makers of the participating countries. The states involved will provide the required regulatory framework to enable the NETS projects to be implemented. Implementation of the NETS project would create an unbundled regional transmission systems according to the EU gas market directive, pool transmission system operators into a single corporate framework, and establish a unified code and tariff system for the resulting network.

In its Green Paper - Towards a secure, sustainable and competitive European energy network (SEC(2008)2869), the European Commission describes the project as "a highly promising initiative to integrate gas transmission operators across Central and South Eastern Europe. NETS has the possibility to create the framework for a regional gas market. Such a market would have sufficient size to attract new investments, which is not the case for the individual national markets, and could significantly reduce operating and investment costs."

The Hungarian Government also expressed its strong support for the NETS initiative. State Secretary for Energy in the Hungarian Ministry of Transport, Telecommunication and Energy Mr Péter Gordos has been appointed to be in charge of NETS at state level communications.