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Three states 15 months late on price directive

3 min read
10:53UTC

The European Commission issued reasoned opinions on 29 April against Croatia, Poland and Portugal for failing to transpose Directive 2024/1711, fifteen months past the 17 January 2025 deadline and one procedural step from Court of Justice referral.

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EconomicAssessed
Key takeaway

The consumer-price directive is fifteen months overdue in three states facing next winter.

The European Commission issued reasoned opinions on Wednesday 29 April against Croatia, Poland and Portugal for failing to transpose Directive 2024/1711, the EU electricity-market design reform written under the prior Commission to stabilise consumer electricity prices and reduce dependency on fossil fuel pricing 1. The transposition deadline was 17 January 2025, fifteen months before the reasoned opinions landed.

Reasoned opinions are the second formal step in EU infringement proceedings, after formal notice. the Commission had sent formal notice letters in March 2025 to 26 of 27 member states for the same failure. Three of those have now reached the reasoned-opinion stage, leaving them one procedural step from referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Each respondent has a two-month response window before the Commission can refer; that places potential referral on a late-June or early-July clock.

Directive 2024/1711 amends two earlier instruments, Directive 2018/2001 on renewable energy and Directive 2019/944 on the electricity market. Its central tools are dynamic-pricing protections, peak-shaving mechanisms and capacity-market rationalisation. Chatham House's energy programme has previously flagged that the directive's most contested provision is the capacity mechanism reform, which national TSOs in central Europe have lobbied against. The directive's core instruments require domestic primary legislation in most jurisdictions rather than regulator-level rulemaking, which is why transposition has slipped past the deadline in over half the bloc.

Consumers in Croatia, Poland and Portugal still see electricity bills set under pre-2024/1711 frameworks. The dynamic-pricing protections and peak-shaving consumer mechanisms the directive would unlock are not available to households or SMEs in those jurisdictions for the 2026-27 winter. The directive's 17 January 2025 deadline came nine months before the storage withdrawal that left the bloc at 28% on 1 April 2026 . The Commission's AccelerateEU package on 22 April omitted any gas storage injection mechanism; the same week's infringement proceedings reveal three states have not transposed the consumer-price directive built for exactly this price environment. The five-finance-minister windfall letter to Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra sits in the same regulatory moment.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

In 2024, the EU passed a law designed to protect consumers when energy prices spike; through mechanisms like price stabilisation and adjusted electricity market rules. Every EU country had until 17 January 2025 to write that law into their own national legislation. Croatia, Poland and Portugal missed the deadline by fifteen months. Brussels has now formally told those three countries: comply within two months or we take you to the EU's top court, which can impose daily financial penalties. In the meantime, the consumer protections that directive would unlock are not available to households or businesses in those three countries during this winter's energy crunch.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Directive 2024/1711's central instruments; peak-shaving obligations, two-way CfDs for generators, capacity mechanism rationalisation; require domestic primary legislation in Croatia, Poland and Portugal.

Their national energy regulators cannot simply adopt the directive's provisions by regulatory decision; parliaments must pass amending energy acts. In all three states, energy market legislation competes for parliamentary time with fiscal and housing legislation in election cycles that ran across 2024-25.

The March 2025 formal notice cohort of 26 member states reveals that slow transposition is near-universal, not a failure specific to these three states. The move to reasoned-opinion stage for Croatia, Poland and Portugal reflects that they responded inadequately or not at all to the March 2025 formal notice, while other states submitted partial transposition or timeline commitments that held the Commission back.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Two-month response window places potential Court of Justice referral on a late-June or early-July clock, overlapping the start of the summer injection season and adding political cost to any Commission decision to escalate.

    Short term · 0.8
  • Risk

    The 2026-27 winter arrives with no domestic CfD or peak-shaving mechanism in Croatia, Poland and Portugal; households in those markets carry full exposure to gas-price volatility in electricity settlement.

    Medium term · 0.82
  • Precedent

    The March 2025 formal notice cohort of 26 member states means the Commission can escalate further reasoned opinions rapidly; this package is the first of potentially several infringement waves on Directive 2024/1711.

    Medium term · 0.75
Sources:European Commission DG Energy·European Commission DG Energy
Mentions:European Commission →Croatia →Poland →Portugal →Wopke Hoekstra →Chatham House →AccelerateEU →IEEFA →Germany →European Union →Greece →Directive 2024/1711 →Directive 2018/2001 →
First Reported In

Update #6 · REMIT II live; storage instrument absent

European Commission DG Energy· 29 Apr 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
AccelerateEU skips gas storage injection mechanism entirely
AccelerateEU package omitted gas storage mechanism on 22 April; the 29 April infringement proceedings on Directive 2024/1711 compound the regulatory-architecture gap by confirming member states have not transposed the consumer-price protection instrument.
Occurred 22 Apr 2026
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This Event
Three states 15 months late on price directive
The legal instrument written specifically to cushion European consumers against the next price shock has no domestic enforcement footprint in three jurisdictions for the upcoming 2026-27 winter.
Led to
Two capitals filed on the gas directive
The Commission's 29 April infringements package issued reasoned opinions against Croatia, Poland and Portugal for missing the transposition deadline on a different directive, EU 2024/1711, placing them one procedural step from a Court of Justice referral; it is the precedent for what follows if states miss the 5 August 2024/1788 deadline, not part of this same beat.
Occurred 2 Aug 2026
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Different Perspectives
Cross-border power traders
Cross-border power traders
The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.
EDF
EDF
River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.
Gasunie
Gasunie
TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.
German gas-fired generators
German gas-fired generators
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European Commission (DG Energy)
European Commission (DG Energy)
Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.
Spain's LNG terminal operators
Spain's LNG terminal operators
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