Gazprom to answer European Commission

Gazprom insists that it is not guilty of violating EU competition rules, Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said during a conference call.

"The presumption of innocence has not been cancelled," he said, reminding that Gazprom has 12 weeks to prepare a formal response. "We will behave like polite people, with arguments," Medvedev said.During the conference he also joked that the consultants on the negotiations with the European Commission had proposed that Gazprom read in detail the book '50 Shades of Gray'." In addition, he drew attention to the fact that the consultations of Gazprom with the EC can be carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, in particular, with the participation of Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky.The deputy chairman of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, will lead the negotiating process on the settlement of the dispute between the European Commission and Gazprom in the antitrust case. Over the next three months Medvedev will hold two meetings with the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, in Brussels and St. Petersburg.On April 22, the European Commission filed official charges against Gazprom of violating EU competition rules, and gave it 12 weeks to provide a response. The EC accuses Gazprom of abusing its dominant position in the gas market in eight EU countries (Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia) and of non-compliance with EU pricing regulations.

"The presumption of innocence has not been cancelled," he said, reminding that Gazprom has 12 weeks to prepare a formal response. "We will behave like polite people, with arguments," Medvedev said.

During the conference he also joked that the consultants on the negotiations with the European Commission had proposed that Gazprom read in detail the book '50 Shades of Gray'." 

In addition, he drew attention to the fact that the consultations of Gazprom with the EC can be carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, in particular, with the participation of Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky.

The deputy chairman of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, will lead the negotiating process on the settlement of the dispute between the European Commission and Gazprom in the antitrust case. Over the next three months Medvedev will hold two meetings with the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, in Brussels and St. Petersburg.

On April 22, the European Commission filed official charges against Gazprom of violating EU competition rules, and gave it 12 weeks to provide a response. The EC accuses Gazprom of abusing its dominant position in the gas market in eight EU countries (Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia) and of non-compliance with EU pricing regulations.

 

As the director of the Center for Studies of World Energy Markets at the RAS Institute of Energy Research, Vyacheslav Kulagin, said in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, it's not about the charge at this stage.The Russian company is only an object of investigations. The expert noted that about three-quarters of such cases in Europe ended in a compromise. Kulagin believes that Gazprom may even align the prices by cancelling discounts offered to some countries, such as compensation for transit.

 

"Therefore, the European Commission is trying to formulate its claims, on the one hand, concluding a contract with each individual country on its conditions, but on the other hand, expressing its suspicion that maybe these conditionsare not quite uniform for each customer," Vyacheslav Kulagin concluded.