Brussels opens infringement cases against 18 states over energy sharing rules

The deadline was 17 July 2026. Eighteen countries missed it. According to pv magazine, the Commission's letters concern failure to notify transposition of Directive (EU) 2024/1711, not a finding on whether national rules conform to it.

The list, as published by pv magazine on 28 September, covers Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden. Nine member states were not included: Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Austria, Portugal and Slovakia. The Commission's announcement does not state whether each of those nine has fully transposed the directive.

Under the new Article 15a, households, small and medium-sized enterprises and public bodies can share self-generated or stored renewable electricity with other customers within the same bidding zone or a more limited area, as each member state decides. The shared electricity is deducted from participants' metered consumption when suppliers calculate the energy component of their bills. Participants can appoint a third-party energy-sharing organiser.

National approaches vary widely. Germany's energy sharing regime under Section 42c of the Energy Industry Act started on 1 June, though pv magazine notes community energy groups have criticised the rules as half-hearted. Spain and France, both among the 18, already had collective self-consumption regimes: Spain extended the maximum distance for shared self-consumption to 5 km in March, and France revised energy allocation rules in June.

The 18 countries have two months to respond, complete transposition and notify the Commission. If the Commission is not satisfied, it may issue a reasoned opinion, the second stage of infringement proceedings, which can end in referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The same day, the Commission sent letters to 26 member states over the recast Hydrogen and Decarbonised Gas Directive, whose 5 August transposition deadline only Italy met.

Demand side gets the attention, supply side gets the money

The infringement cases land in a week when European energy and industry policy is being pulled in several directions at once. On the same day, tech.eu's weekly funding recap counted more than 65 European tech funding deals worth over €2 billion, with robotics (€508.3 million), artificial intelligence (€406.6 million) and healthtech (€305.8 million) leading by industry, and Portugal (€510.9 million), the Netherlands (€435.9 million) and the UK (€273.9 million) leading by country.

Semiconductor demand is the other half of the same problem. Tom's Hardware reported on 25 September that ASML sold nothing in Europe in 2026, with Europe accounting for 0% of the lithography supplier's revenue in the first two quarters. "We are selling absolutely nothing in Europe," said Frank Heemskerk, ASML's executive vice president of public affairs, at a panel at De Balie. Europe was 1% of revenue in 2025, 5% in 2024, 4% in 2023 and 2% in 2022, per the company's investor presentations. Heemskerk called on EU authorities to aggregate and guarantee demand for European-made chips rather than only subsidising fab construction.

On the consumer side, the European Heat Pump Association said residential heat pump sales rose 11% in the first half of 2026, to around 1,163,000 units across twelve countries, against 1,048,000 a year earlier. The EHPA attributed the increase to higher oil and gas prices during the Strait of Hormuz crisis and to the Commission's plans to push governments to lower electricity taxes. "The sooner electricity becomes the most affordable solution, the quicker we'll get clean," said EHPA director general Paul Kenny, calling for taxes to be dropped on electricity and shifted onto fossil fuels.

Storage economics are moving too. Italy's energy regulator Arera raised the MACSE auction premium cap to €27,000 per qualified MWh per year, up from €22,000 proposed in July, in resolution 332/2026 dated 24 September, pv magazine Italy reported. The increase comes mainly from a benchmark investment cost rising from €125,000 to €150,500/MWh and a WACC of 8.2%, and the cap is 27% lower than in the first auction. For a reference 75 MW / 600 MWh asset, the pre-auction guarantee alone is €2,700 per qualified MWh, payable in cash by 20 October.

None of this settles the underlying question the Commission's letters raise. Transposing a directive is a legal step. Building the grid, the tariffs and the demand that make sharing worthwhile is a different one, and the two-month clock now running in 18 capitals is only the first.