Dir. 2022:20 Översyn av Regleringen på El- och Naturgasområdena

Kommittédirektiv Dir. 2022:20, “Översyn av regleringen på el- och naturgasområdena”, decided at a government meeting 17 March 2022 (Infrastrukturdepartementet). The founding directive for the inquiry that eventually produced the broader tariff-reform legislative track now culminating in Prop. 2025/26:26.

Mandate

A särskild utredare (special investigator) was tasked with reviewing the ex-ante regulation of connection and access fees charged by Swedish electricity grid and natural gas companies (ellagen 1997:857 ch. 5; naturgaslagen 2005:403 ch. 6), driven by two problems:

1. CJEU compliance — reconcile Swedish law with the CJEU’s 2 September 2021 ruling in Case C-718/18, Commission v. Germany (the “Tysklandsdomen”), which found Germany failed to properly transpose Arts. 37(1)(a) and 37(6)(a)-(b) of Directive 2009/72/EC (predecessor to Directive 2019/944): national regulatory authorities (Ei, in Sweden) must have exclusive competence over ex-ante tariff-method regulation, independent of both government and the legislature — the legislature cannot strip that authority from the regulators and assign it to other public bodies. The directive also asks the inquiry to examine the ruling’s consequences for other EU member states, and to assess to what extent Ei can and should be empowered to issue föreskrifter on connection and transmission fees and conditions. It must weigh in particular reasonable pricing for customers and efficient use of existing infrastructure, incentives for new and replacement investment, and technology and service development. The directive notes that the German framework has features in common with the Swedish one (Sweden intervened on Germany’s side in the case), so Swedish compliance needs to be secured; Directive 2009/72/EC was replaced by Directive 2019/944 with no substantive change to ex-ante regulation.
2. Appeals process reform — assess whether customer-side parties (not just grid/gas companies) should gain standing to appeal Ei’s ex-ante regulatory decisions, and whether the current three-instance court process should be streamlined (options floated: subject-specific expertise on the bench, limiting review to two court instances, or leave-to-appeal at various stages, “as applies for e.g. corresponding cases under” the Electronic Communications Act (2003:389)). The directive notes that appeals are currently made largely by the grid/gas companies and can take three instances.

Deadline: report due 31 October 2023. Consultation partners: Ei, industry and customer organizations, other relevant ongoing inquiries.

Outcome

The inquiry (named Utredningen om översyn av regleringen på el- och naturgasområdena) delivered SOU 2023:64, “Ett förändrat regelverk för framtidens el- och gasnät”, in October 2023 — already cited elsewhere in the wiki (e.g. Source - Ei Inriktning intäktsramar 2028-2031 (2025)) as the proposal to delegate detailed intäktsram calculation rules from ellagen to Ei föreskrifter, enabling the RP5 TOTEX/lösningsneutralitet reform. Two experts on the inquiry, Christian Marling and Ronald Liljegren, filed a dissenting särskilt yttrande — see Source - Särskilt Yttrande SOU 2023-64 Marling Liljegren (2023). The government’s final legislative response is Prop. 2025/26:26 (2 October 2025), which adopts the delegation-to-föreskrifter direction but diverges from SOU 2023:64 on several specific points (keeps the särskilt investeringsutrymme law, does not extend överrullning to two periods).

Relevance to the wiki

This resolves a data gap previously flagged on Ei (“SOU 2023:64 legislative process status — prerequisite for full RP5 methodology implementation; status unclear after 2024”) and on the Regulatory Calendar Watch list. See RP5 Revenue Cap Methodology (2028–2031) › Capital base valuation — normvärdering and Swedish DSO Tariff Reform — Three Parallel Tracks (2025–2027) for how the resulting Prop. 2025/26:26 fits alongside the RP5/TOTEX and förhandsprövning tracks already documented there.