Although 17 of the 27 EU member states last month requested specific adjustments to the import-related clauses of the methane rule, the European Commission refused to change the regulations and instead offered non-binding recommendations. During a Tuesday session of the industry committee within the European Parliament, Celine Gauer, the European Commission's director general for energy, announced that the bloc expects to release a set of two recommendations "hopefully next week."
Gauer stated that the guidelines will "support companies to demonstrate compliance" and "urge member states not to apply penalties for a certain period of time, letting time for the market to adjust, to demonstrate compliance and to go beyond the crisis we are facing at the moment."
The United States, now Europe's biggest LNG provider, has cautioned that it will redirect its supplies to other markets if the EU does not relax the regulation.
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On Wednesday, EU member state envoys in Brussels are set to discuss how the methane regulation (EUMR) affects the region's energy security. Ireland, which holds the rotating EU presidency until year's end, requested that member states deliberate on what advice to offer the commission "to address the concerns related to the implementation of the Methane Regulation," as reported by Bloomberg on Monday.
The upcoming discussions follow a debate at last month's energy ministers' meeting. A coalition of nations - Czechia, Slovakia, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Sweden - pressed the commission at that meeting to rapidly identify methods to reduce obstacles for oil and gas imports, including a three-year delay of importer obligations.
The debate occurs as the EU aims to reduce persistently elevated energy prices and diversify its supply sources against the backdrop of the Middle East conflict and ongoing efforts to stop depending on Russian energy. This also highlights the difficulties the EU encounters when applying more rigorous environmental norms to goods from non-EU nations.
For the industrial sector, the EU's promised guidance falls short. Over recent months, companies from the chemicals, oil-and-gas, and energy-trading sectors have demanded a delay, warning that importers could be forced into noncompliance. They pointed to verification as a key obstacle, citing a shortage of approved protocols and certifying organizations.
"We believe that this is a sound legal way of going about the difficulties that we punctually have at the moment," Gauer told EU lawmakers. "And this is also the most immediate one because once a recommendation is adopted, then it is of course also relevant for national courts and will be directly applicable."
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