The European Union is planning to look into the energy contracts between the European states and countries outside it. EU is determined to dig into the possible problems despite the fact that Europe is dependent on Russian gas supply.
After the launch of the energy union, the EU is taking a big step in increasing its grasp regarding legal concerns to ensure supply to its 28-member nation. Miguel Arias Canete, EU energy commissioner reiterated that they aim to prevent and alleviate possible gas supply crisis.
Gazprom, Russian state energy firm is now being investigated by the EU regarding concerns of irregular gas prices which clearly violates EU's fair trading rules. They want to inspect even further at the energy contracts between state members and non EU countries to ensure that Russia is not violating any rules of the fair trade.in its current state, the EU can only look into contracts right after they are already signed
Canete pointed out that they are doing this to create transparency and to be able to look into the energy supply situation. Many experts' viewed EU's move as a deterent on Gazprom's plan to achieve more market shares than allowed.
But EU clarified that it is not only Russia but also other major gas suppliers like Norway and Algeria can also be examined. They added that they will not be changing any contracts but they want to gain important information's that might affect the security of supply.
In the advent that EU finds any irregularities, it cannot cancel the commercial contracts immediately but will have to ask the European Court of Justice to void it. Countries like Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia and Poland are included in EU's investigation. These countries though pledged their future with EU and not with Moscow.
Another reason why EU is cleaning up any irregularities regarding contracts of gas supply is that it wants to create nine new energy regions. This regions would eventually help any members of the EU that will experience any form of energy crisis.
