REMIT II live; storage instrument absent

The 40th Gas Regulatory Forum opened in Madrid on 29 April, the same day REMIT 2.0 took effect. Spain's CNMC hosts the two-day event; Day 2 on 30 April covers the launch of the Gas and Biomethane Mechanism and a review of the REPowerEU gas import ban. ENTSOG presents its mid-term infrastructure assessment framework alongside the live compliance session.

The Forum is the first place industry can question regulators about the 14-day reporting cliff face-to-face, with ACER in the room. Day 1 communique has not been posted; Day 2 conclusions land 30 April. Read full version ↓

The European Commission sent formal infringement warnings to Croatia, Poland and Portugal on 29 April for failing to transpose Directive 2024/1711, the EU's electricity market design reform. The deadline was 17 January 2025; fifteen months ago. All three are now one step from referral to the Court of Justice of the EU.

The directive contains the consumer protection instruments; price-stabilisation mechanisms and capacity market reforms; that were supposed to shield households and businesses from exactly the kind of price crisis Europe is currently experiencing. Those protections are not yet law in any of the three states. Read full version ↓

The European Commission's 29 April infringements package included a second Hungary-related action: a reasoned opinion over MOL's use of Energy Charter Treaty Article 26 to bring investor-state arbitration claims against other EU member states. MOL is majority-owned by the Hungarian state.

The proceedings land on a different political baseline than the Orbán era. Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar has pledged closer EU alignment, but the MOL infringement is a structural legal question; about whether a state-controlled company can use an international treaty to sue fellow EU members; that the election result does not resolve. Read full version ↓

France May-26 power settled at EUR 21.80/MWh on 28 April; Germany's equivalent settled at EUR 77.55/MWh. The EUR 55.75 gap is more than double Kpler's January 2025 record on the same calendar product. The spread is sustained by EDF's nuclear fleet running at its highest output since 2019, and the France-Germany interconnector cannot move enough surplus east to close the price gap.

The window closes in September 2026, when Flamanville-3 enters a twelve-month overhaul . Industrial buyers in Germany are pricing a competitive disadvantage against French peers through Q3; forward sellers of French power past September are pricing a supply buffer the overhaul removes. Read full version ↓

The EU's 20th Russia sanctions package entered force on 23 April. The Arc7 icebreaker maintenance ban, operative from 25 April, bars six vessels due dry-dock from EU yards across their next maintenance cycle. Forty-six shadow-fleet vessels were added to the port-access ban. A proposed full maritime services ban on Russian crude failed because not every member state agreed.

The Arc7 ban stacks directly on top of the Russian LNG spot contract ban that also entered force on 25 April , creating a compounded constraint on Arctic LNG export capacity; but the failed maritime ban leaves the shadow-fleet circumvention route for crude partially open. Read full version ↓

Bruegel's Week 17 dataset put EU gas storage at 32% on 28 April, up from 31.47% on 25 April. To hit 80% by 1 November, the EU needs to inject roughly 0.25 percentage points per day; a pace the post-ban week tracked below. Bruegel separately flagged that European reverse gas flows to Ukraine dropped sharply in the same dataset, a directional signal absent from wire reporting.

GTS (Gasunie Transport Services) confirmed the Dutch 2026/2027 security-of-supply target at 115 TWh, with state-owned EBN (Energie Beheer Nederland) mandated to fill up to 80 TWh via Bergermeer; which held only 15 TWh of its 46 TWh capacity at end-January. Read full version ↓

EADaily, a tier-3 Russian online outlet, reported on 27 April that Gazprom's TurkStream deliveries to Europe fell to 40.3 mcm/day in April, a 25% drop from March and the lowest since June 2025. Hungary and Slovakia together accounted for 6.4 mcm/day of the decline. The figure has not been confirmed by Reuters, Bloomberg or Interfax.

This is a directional signal only. Interfax's March data showed TurkStream up 21% year-on-year at 1.704 bcm. If the April decline is real, it compounds the operational risk picture already building around the Velebit explosives intercept and the Serbia-Hungary attribution dispute . Read full version ↓

Ukraine restarted Russian crude flows via the Druzhba pipeline on 22 April. Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party won the 12 April election, lifted Budapest's veto on the EUR 90 billion EU-Ukraine loan. MOL took first deliveries on 23 April; Slovakia confirmed receipt the same morning.

Druzhba moves crude, not gas, so its restart does not directly change Europe's gas storage picture. The political shift matters: Hungary's previous blocking position on sanctions, loan disbursement and the MOL infringement all sit on a changed baseline. Read full version ↓

The Mubaraz, an LNG tanker loaded at ADNOC's Das Island terminal in early March, reappeared west of India on 27 April after going dark around 31 March. It completed the first confirmed loaded LNG transit through the strait of Hormuz since the conflict began, heading for a terminal in China with an estimated 15 May arrival.

Before the conflict roughly three loaded LNG carriers transited Hormuz daily. The JKM-TTF spread; Asian benchmark at USD 16.55/MMBtu against TTF equivalent near USD 14.80 on 28 April; routes flexible Atlantic cargoes east, not west. European buyers watching the Hormuz partial reopening should note: cargoes clear Hormuz toward the highest netback, and right now that is China. Read full version ↓