Gazprom Says Progress Made in EU Anti-trust Talks
Gazprom said on Friday that anti-trust talks with the European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had made progress.
The Russian state-controlled company is fighting allegations of overcharging customers and blocking East European rivals in contravention of EU rules. It denies the allegations.
Gazprom said it and the European Commission had agreed to continue work on "seeking a mutually acceptable solution" in relation to the EU's investigation into the company's practices.
"We are satisfied about the outcome of today's meeting, which was conducted in a constructive atmosphere," Gazprom's Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said in a statement about the talks in Brussels.
The EU antitrust authority has said that Gazprom's gas price formula, which is linked to the price of oil, has led to consumers in Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia paying excessive prices compared with Germany. Gazprom denies wrongdoings.
Gazprom, which supplies a third of the EU’s gas, is facing with fines of up to 10 percent of its global turnover after a six-year-long investigation.
To meet EU requests, Gazprom offered to let clients renegotiate decades-long, oil-indexed contracts, with prices linked to benchmarks such as European gas market hubs and border prices, including in Germany.
The concessions made by Gazprom are now being tested to assess their impact in the market. The proposals made during the "market test" were discussed during the Friday talks, Gazprom said.
Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin
