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Polish Briefing 3 November, 2020 8:30 am   
COMMENTS: Mateusz Gibała

Polish Briefing: The offshore act may go to the Sejm in December

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What goes on in Poland on the 3rd of November.

The offshore act may go to the Sejm in December

The order of the Council of Ministers (RM) for Tuesday’s meeting does not include the act on promoting electricity generation in offshore wind farms. At the previous meeting, members of the Council of Ministers had additional questions. However, the act was not on the November agenda. Perhaps the Sejm will deal with it only in December.

The Sejm may therefore deal with this bill at the earliest in early December, and not in early November, according to the original plan. The agenda shows that the next meeting will be held on November 4th and 5th. At the moment, there is only one date for the Sejm session in November on the pages of the Sejm. The next one has been scheduled for December. It was during this November session that the Sejm was supposed to deal with this bill. However, this will not happen. The government will not accept it until then, because on November 3 it is not on the agenda.

The Sejm may adopt it at the earliest the next week. Then the document may be discussed, but the deputies will not deal with it until the meeting on 9 and 10 December. There will be one more meeting before the end of the year, which will run from 15 to 17 December. The president’s signature will still be required for it to enter into force in early 2021.

German partner of Nord Stream 2 may appeal against UOKiK penalty

Wintershall DEA, the financial partner of the Nord Stream 2 project, reserves the right to appeal against the ruling of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) on the financial model of this investment. The Poles ruled that it should be canceled and Gazprom’s cooperation with Western European companies on the disputed gas pipeline should be terminated.

The company declared that it had already fulfilled all financial obligations related to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project under the financial model challenged by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, i.e. a loan of EUR 950 million. The Wintershall DEA therefore reserves the right to appeal against its ruling, which imposes penalties on it and other project partners amounting to 10 percent of annual revenues. Gazprom received a fine of $ 7.6 billion and its European partners each $ 61 million.

It is worth noting that Wintershall DEA distanced itself in the past from discussions about the completion date of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. – As we are only the financial investor of the project, we cannot answer the question about the construction schedule. This should be done by colleagues from Nord Stream 2 AG, which is the operator of the project – informed Wintershall DEA in March. However, it expressed its hope in August that the project would be implemented “in the near future” and that the loan would be repaid in line with the contract.

Wintershall DEA’s shareholders are German BASF and Russian LetterOne. This company extracts hydrocarbons in the world.