August 22 (SeeNews) - Serbia will be sanctioned in October by an organisation monitoring the country adoption of EU energy practices for failing to unbundle the transmission operations of state-owned Srbijagas from its other activities, local media reported.
The discussion on the subject is scheduled for October 14 at the Energy Community meeting in Sarajevo, newspaper Vecernje Novosti reported on Friday. The Energy Community was established by the EU and eight aspiring member countries in order to extend the EU's energy policy to would-be members.
Serbia was obliged by the agreement with the Energy Community adopted in 2014 to ensure the indenpendence of its transmission system operator Srbijagas in terms of organization and decision-making from its supply, distribution and storage activities.
The director of the Secretariat of the Energy Community, Janez Kopac, said in March that he would not tolerate decades of delays of fulfilling Srbijagas obligations and set July 1, 2016 as a deadline for sorting out the issue.
He added then that the sanctions might be symbolic, like Serbia being barred from voting at the Energy Community meetings, but also more severe ones, like losing financing for energy projects from EU pre-accesion funds.
The chief negotiator for Serbia's accession to the EU, Tanja Miscevic, told Vecernje Novosti that the restructuring of Srbijagas is a prerequisite for opening EU negotiations Chapter 15, which deals with energy.