ACER has published its Recommendation to the European Commission on measures to speed up the effective implementation of EU electricity market rules.
Background
The EU electricity market is grounded in a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework. This includes EU-wide network codes and guidelines and the adoption of detailed rules (e.g. terms and conditions or methodologies (TCMs)), designed to ensure that the market operates efficiently.
Delays in implementing these rules hinder the proper functioning of Europe’s electricity system, resulting in economic costs for market participants and consumers.
Why an ACER Recommendation to the European Commission?
ACER’s (2024) monitoring found major delays in implementing the TCMs, both at EU and regional level, affecting key areas such as electricity balancing, system operation and forward capacity.
This ACER Recommendation responds to the European Commission’s (2024) request for advice on how to strengthen the regulatory framework to reduce such delays.
What are ACER’s findings and recommendations?
ACER’s Recommendation identifies challenges in three main areas:
- Implementation timelines: deadlines are often unclear or lack sufficient justification.
- Non-compliance: the decision-making process for addressing non-compliance by the European Union Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) and regional coordination centres (RCCs) has room for improvement.
- Collective non-compliance: while the enforcement of individual obligations of transmission system operators (TSOs) and nominated electricity market operators (NEMOs) poses no problem, current enforcement processes could fall short when tackling delayed implementation or failure to comply in cases where, across Union obligations, all TSOs or all NEMOs are tasked with jointly carrying out an obligation and collectively fail.
ACER recommends that the European Commission:
- Improve implementation and monitoring through clearer deadlines and reporting requirements.
- Strengthen the enforcement framework in the ACER Regulation to ensure non-compliance by ENTSO-E and RCCs is addressed consistently and effectively.
- Assess how to further improve enforcement for collective obligations (i.e. all TSOs and all NEMOs obligations).
