The European Commission accused Gazprom of violation of antimonopoly legislation

Continuation: Gazprom will appeal the decision of the European Commission

The European Commission brought Gazprom the charges of abuse of the monopoly position in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the European Commission.

The commission considered that the Russian state -owned company prevents the free circulation of gas between European countries, interferes with the diversification of gas supplies and unfairly determines the price of gas for customers, allegedly pursuing the interests of the company and Russia.

The European Commission remained unhappy that the company imposes contracts with prices indexed on the basis of the cost of a barrel of oil, as well as a ban on the resale of gas. Gazprom has repeatedly announced that they consider the purpose of investigating the European Commission to reduce the price of Russian gas.

The commission considered that territorial restrictions on the use of gas can allow Russian monopoly to set too high prices for buyers from Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.

Now Gazprom has 12 weeks for the answer. The list of claims does not mean that the investigation has been made a decision, since it is necessary to listen to the arguments of the defendant.

The formal investigation procedure was launched in 2012, in December 2013, the Russian state -owned company sent the European Commission proposals on the pre -trial settlement of the conflict. Three months later, they were commented by Hoacin Almunia, who then oversaw the European Commission about antimonopoly legislation in the European Commission.

Hesaid that the EC received “good comments on two of the three regions of claims”, but Gazprom was not satisfied with the position of pricing. The state -owned company has already agreed to index the spot prices for some consumers, which they seek in the European Union, but not in Eastern Europe, where Gazprom is the main supplier of gas.

According to RBC, Sberbank CIB analysts believe that the amount of fines that can be assigned according to the results of the investigation will be tied to the annual revenue of Gazprom in eight countries of the European Union, which conducts an investigation. In their opinion, she can "even approach $ 2 billion."