The Bulgarian Energy Holding is in the final stages of taking commitments regarding theBEHGascase. To this end, the Parliament will instruct the Energy Minister Temenuja Petkova to take the necessary actions to reach an agreement with the European Commission’s caseBEHgas. In order to do so, a project-decision will be introduced in the parliament by the members of the parliament of GERB Delyan Dobrev, Valentin Nikolov and Aleksander Nenkov. The project decision will be discussed in the Energy commission of the Parliament on Thursday. The case BEH Gas was initiated by the EC against BEH, Bulgartranzgas and Bulgargas because of suspicions of dominant position in thegasmarket in Bulgaria.
In the arguments
presented, the members of parliament point out that in the end of May, the EC
reached an agreement with Gazprom in the case of abuse of dominant position in
Central and Eastern Europe, without financial sanctions. According to the MPs,
the development of the case against Gazprom is similar to the BEH Gascase,
because of similar legal classifications of the violations and overlapping
market participants who are involved in the cases. Therefore, they believe that
there are new circumstances that require the amendment of the previous decision
of the National Assembly without its repeal.
The previous decision of the Parliament regarding thegascase was
taken at the end of November 2017. With it the National Parliament supported
the closing of the BEH Gascase without acknowledging any
wrongdoing and without assuming responsibility and at the same time committing
to uphold any obligations arising from a prohibitive decision, even including
commitments regarding any financial sanctions that may arise. This decision was
taken after the European Commission rejected on 9 November the commitments made
by the Bulgarian side and it became clear that it intends to close the BEH Gascase
with a restrictive decision and a financial sanction.
On 8 July and 12 July, the Energy commission heard Minister Petkova and
theBEHGroup on the development of thegascase and on the
existence of newly discovered circumstances that may have exculpatory or at
least significantly mitigating character.
