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Two capitals filed on the gas directive

3 min read

10:47UTC

Portugal lodged a partial transposition in April. Slovakia lodged a note saying it needs none. The other twenty-five member states have filed nothing at all.

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Key takeaway

Only Portugal and Slovakia have told Brussels they have transposed the recast EU gas directive.

Portugal and Slovakia are the only members of the European Union's twenty-seven to have notified the European Commission of national measures transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1788, two days before the deadline of Wednesday 5 August 2026 ¹. The directive recast the bloc's rules for its internal markets in renewable gas, natural gas and hydrogen. Its Article 94 requires transposing measures to be in force by that Wednesday.

Portugal lodged Decreto-Lei n.º 94/2026 of 30 April 2026, whose own title calls it a transposição parcial, a partial transposition, covering this directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive together. Slovakia lodged Zákon č. 259/2025 under the register annotation "Member State does not consider the transposition necessary" ². Bratislava has told Brussels it sees no new domestic law as needed. Lisbon has told Brussels it has written part of one.

EUR-Lex records notifications to the Commission, not the contents of national gazettes. Filing lags legislating as a matter of routine, and a capital can have a statute in force with nothing yet standing against its name in Brussels. What the register supports is the narrow reading, and the narrow reading still merits a desk's attention: two governments have told the Commission they have transposed, on a deadline whose listed articles run to unbundling, certification of transmission and distribution system operators, third-party access, tariff principles for gas and hydrogen networks, network development planning, storage and LNG facility access, and supplier switching ³.

Missing a transposition deadline starts a documented procedure rather than a fine. the Commission's April infringements package issued reasoned opinions against Croatia, Poland and Portugal over a separate electricity directive, leaving those three one procedural step short of a referral to the Court of Justice . The instruments that actually landed across the past fortnight came from agencies rather than parliaments: ACER published an EU-wide generation investment-cost dataset on 30 July , and CRE authorised experimental local flexibility markets on the RTE and Enedis platforms the same day. Harmonised hydrogen network access cannot arrive that way. It needs twenty-seven legislatures, and so far two of them have said anything at all.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

EU countries have until 5 August 2026 to write their own laws implementing a shared rulebook for gas and hydrogen networks, covering things like who can access a pipeline and how storage facilities are priced. Portugal has only partly done this so far, and Slovakia has told Brussels it thinks its existing laws already cover the requirement.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The directive folds hydrogen network access and storage rules into what was previously a gas-only regime, so states must decide whether to extend existing gas TSO certification frameworks to hydrogen operators or write parallel rules.

Portugal's partial filing and Slovakia's non-necessity claim both point to legislatures treating the hydrogen provisions as the harder drafting problem, not the established gas articles.

What could happen next?

Precedent
The Commission's register will likely show a wave of late or partial notifications from other member states as the 5 August deadline passes, since Portugal and Slovakia's filings suggest hydrogen provisions are the sticking point across the bloc.
Risk
Slovakia's non-necessity claim invites Commission scrutiny; a formal challenge would clarify how much existing national law can substitute for a new transposing instrument.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The 2009 Third Energy Package took some capitals over two years past deadline to fully transpose its unbundling articles for gas incumbents holding mixed generation and network assets, a delay pattern this directive's Portugal and Slovakia filings appear to be repeating.

Counter-parallel: The 2019 recast Electricity Directive saw near-universal on-time transposition, because its core obligations mostly restated existing national market-coupling arrangements rather than requiring new legal instruments for an unfamiliar asset class like hydrogen networks.

For network operators, unbundling and third-party access articles determine who can build hydrogen infrastructure and on what terms, which affects capital planning for projects already in permitting.

A state that files late leaves investors without certainty on tariff principles for new hydrogen networks until the domestic instrument lands, a gap that can delay final investment decisions by a construction season.

Consensus view: Portugal's partial notification via Decreto-Lei n.º 94/2026 and Slovakia's self-declared-unnecessary annotation on Zákon č. 259/2025 both land ahead of the 5 August 2026 deadline without a completed transposition, a pattern the last two internal energy market directives also produced, suggesting most of the bloc will file close to or after that date rather than well ahead of it.

Counter-view: National regulators in smaller member states argue the register annotation understates readiness, since a state can already comply through pre-existing unbundling and third-party access law and simply lacks a new instrument to notify.

Key tension: Whether the Commission treats a 'transposition not necessary' annotation as evidence of compliance or as a gap requiring its own infringement scrutiny after 5 August.

Sources:EUR-Lex·EUR-Lex

Mentions:Portugal →Slovakia →European Commission →Directive 2024/1711 →ACER →Croatia →Poland →EUR-Lex →Enedis →Lisbon →Brussels →European Union →CRE →RTE (Reseau de Transport d'Electricite) →Directive (EU) 2024/1788 →

First Reported In

Update #32 · Two of 27 have filed on the gas rulebook

EUR-Lex· 3 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Croatia, Poland, Portugal 15 months late on EU rule

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 29 Apr 2026

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This Event

Two capitals filed on the gas directive

The EU's harmonised access and tariff rules for gas and hydrogen networks depend on twenty-seven national statutes, and the Commission's register shows two.

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