FNB Gas, the association of Germany's gas transmission system operators, told Berlin on Wednesday 27 May that the market-based storage-refill framework is broken and that an overhaul is "absolutely essential". 1 One number carries the case. The January 2026 capacity auctions for the 2026-27 storage year drew zero bookings. Operators offered 5.7 TWh in the German market area and 750 GWh in the Dutch, and not a single lot cleared.
The inverted summer-winter strip explains the empty book. With winter on the TTF curve, the Dutch gas benchmark, trading below summer, an injector who fills now and sells the winter loses on the spread, so the intrinsic incentive to inject has gone . FNB Gas warns that the low inventories which follow raise winter-shortage risk.
The German transmission system operators, not a commentator, are pronouncing the mechanism dead, and the verdict lands ten days after Berlin confirmed it would introduce no summer injection scheme . EU storage still hit 40.1% on Monday 1 June at roughly 0.33 pp/day, above the 0.257 floor needed for 80% by November . That pace is bought by regulated demand rather than commercial arbitrage: the Dutch state's trebled EBN mandate and France's CRE booking order are carrying the trajectory , where EBN is the Dutch state energy company and CRE is France's energy regulator. The headline fill looks healthy while the mechanism beneath it has stopped functioning.
The counter-case runs that on-track storage refutes any "broken model" claim. The mandates are annual instruments renewed by political decision, not a price signal that self-corrects. Strip them out and the bookings data says the commercial market would inject almost nothing.
