Executive Summary

• As a matter of principle, EIM members support the goal of the Commission of setting up a more flexible and transparent capacity allocation process, in order to better meet the needs from different market segments;
• EIM members believes, however, that the Commission should not go beyond the scope of the delegation set by Article 43 (2) of the Recast Directive which puts the emphasis on the efficiency of the allocation process and the operational concerns of the infrastructure managers;
• EIM members urge the Commission to take into account the work that is currently being developed by the RNE within the TTR project. Most notably, the work on Temporary Capacity Restrictions (TCRs) should be taken into account as it reflects the experience made of the sector;
• EIM members support the idea of giving applicants the opportunity to submit late requests for capacity but believe that the two-round procedure proposed by the Commission will fail to serve this purpose and risks creating an inefficient allocation process;
• EIM members support the goal of giving applicants a chance to prepare and adapt to capacity restrictions in due time but believe that imposing concrete thresholds will merely increase the costs and the administrative burden on both the IMs and applicants without necessarily delivering on the desired goal; the implementation of such a system would also pose significant operational concerns notably for IMs facing severe cuts in the public funding of infrastructure investments;
• EIM members welcome the proposal that caters for those situations where capacity restrictions are needed for interventions which, if not started as soon as possible, would lead to major financial losses; this flexibility is key for an efficient asset management;
• EIM members support the need to ensure that applicants have access to information regarding capacity restrictions but call for a more proportional approach as to  the type of information that should be disclosed (and to whom it should be disclosed);
• EIM members call on the Commission to reassess the proportionality of the measures proposed regarding the obligation of IMs to inform applicants on alternatives and defining criteria for divertibility;
• EIM members believe that IMs should be given the opportunity to address any concern related to the capacity restrictions among themselves before being obliged to set up a task force with stakeholders;
• Finally, EIM members believe that a transition period should be foreseen that would enable IMs to adapt to the new rules.