PRESS RELEASE

(Bucharest, 11 September, 2020)

Current status of the DE-AT-PL-4M MC (Interim Coupling) Project

Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Bratislava
11 September 2020

The Nominated Electricity Market Operators (NEMOs) and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) from Austria, Germany, Poland and the 4M Market Coupling (4M MC) countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, hereby inform stakeholders about the current status of the project.

The DE-AT-PL-4M MC Project, also referred to as Interim Coupling project, has completed the design phase and entered its implementation phase in the end of 2019, with an envisaged go-live date in September 2020. The project aims to connect the borders of 4M MC with the Europe-wide Multi-Regional Coupling (MRC) by introducing NTC-based implicit capacity allocation on six borders (PL-DE, PL-CZ, PL-SK, CZ-DE, CZ-AT, HU-AT). However, in Q1 2020 local implementation bottlenecks have been identified by several project parties due to interdependencies between ongoing parallel projects, resulting in a delay of Interim Coupling implementation activities by several months. As a consequence, Interim Coupling will not be able to go live in September 2020. The National Regulatory Authorities have requested the European Commission to provide guidance on the way forward for the project. Such guidance from the Commission is expected to be received in the upcoming weeks. Market participants will be informed about the next steps as soon as possible.

PRESS RELEASE 11.9.2020