12MAY

Three states 15 months late on price directive

3 min read

10:23UTC

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

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Belgium

Belgium

Primary parallel: After Directive 2009/72/EC (the Third Energy Package's electricity market directive) entered force, Greece and Germany both missed transposition deadlines and received reasoned opinions.

Greece received a Court of Justice referral in 2012 and faced daily penalty fines under Article 260 TFEU for approximately fourteen months before full transposition. The parallel is structural: both directives require domestic primary legislation to establish market mechanisms, not regulatory rulemaking.

Counter-parallel: Ireland transposed the 2009 directive fourteen months late but avoided Article 260 fines by submitting a credible parliamentary timeline in its response to the reasoned opinion. Poland's established practice of submitting timeline commitments in EU infringement responses may produce a similar outcome here, delaying Court referral without delivering actual consumer protections.

Domestic electricity bills in Croatia, Poland and Portugal are set under pre-2024/1711 frameworks. The directive's peak-shaving consumer mechanism, which limits exposure to gas-price volatility in electricity settlement, is not available to households or SMEs in those jurisdictions for the 2026-27 winter .

For industrial offtakers in Poland; the EU's second-largest industrial gas consumer; the absence of a functioning domestic CfD mechanism means long-term power purchase agreements cannot be structured under the EU framework, increasing the cost of capital for industrial renewable PPA transactions in Polish energy-intensive sectors.

Consensus view: Chatham House's energy programme has previously flagged that Directive 2024/1711's most contested provision is capacity mechanism reform, which national transmission system operators (TSOs) in central Europe lobbied against during the legislative process.

Croatia's energy regulator (HERA) and Poland's URE have both delayed primary-legislation drafting, each citing conflicts with their existing capacity market designs. The 17 January 2025 deadline arriving before the 2026 injection season makes the transposition gap a live supply-security liability, not a theoretical one.

Counter-view: IEEFA has argued that the directive's two-way contracts for difference (CfDs) and peak-shaving mechanisms require domestic primary legislation in most jurisdictions; not regulator-level rulemaking; making the fifteen-month slip structurally predictable rather than negligent. Portugal's case is complicated by its simultaneous referral risk on Directive 2023/2413 renewables transposition, suggesting a legislative backlog rather than political resistance.

Key tension: Whether the two-month response window before potential Court of Justice referral accelerates domestic legislative drafting or produces compliance letters that stall proceedings without actual transposition.

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.

Different Perspectives

Hungarian and Slovak gas buyers and regulators

Hungary cleared EUR 123.23/MWh on 12 May, EUR 54 above Spain's same-day clearing and the largest single-market premium of the briefing series, as ACER named it among seven NRAs in TurkStream derogation opinions with the 5 August EC ruling pending. A denial of derogation removes the only available pipeline substitute for Russian LNG banned since 25 April.

Norwegian upstream producers (Equinor, ORLEN Upstream Norway)

Equinor started the Eirin field on 5 May (27.6 mmboe via Gassled) and signed NOK 17bn of Q1 drilling contracts on USD 9.77bn adjusted operating income. These are long-horizon defences against the Sodir-confirmed Norwegian production decline, not molecules deliverable inside the 2026 injection window.

European Commission (DG Energy)

The Commission cut the storage target from 90% to 80% in April without enforcement teeth; a second formal cut requires Council unanimity not currently available, leaving silent acceptance of a sub-80% landing as the operative policy posture. The AccelerateEU package offered no storage injection mechanism, confirming consumer-relief tools as the preferred instrument.

Major LNG buyers (Japanese and Korean utilities)

With JKM-TTF at USD 2.30/MMBtu, Asian buyers retain the routing premium on flexible Atlantic cargoes by a margin of USD 0.80 to 1.10/MMBtu above the cargo-diversion breakeven. The spring demand softening that compressed the spread from USD 3 or more has not reversed the routing direction, and Asian buyers face no material competitive threat from European procurement at prevailing TTF.

Industrial gas consumers (BASF, Yara, Cefic members)

BASF flagged Verbund site production freezes and Yara curtailed 25% of European output at EUR 47 TTF, confirming that the industrial demand destruction threshold has migrated EUR 23 below the 2022 ceiling. Without a gas price subsidy instrument or trade protection on fertiliser imports, further curtailment is the rational response to any TTF move above EUR 50.

National energy regulators (BNetzA, CRE, ACER)

ACER's 6 May TurkStream derogation opinions put seven NRAs on notice that the 5 August EC ruling window is live; the concurrent Hungary EUR 123/MWh single-market premium compounds the political pressure on the Commission to either grant or formally deny the derogations before the code application date.