The dissertation is a complex scientific research of legal regulation of the natural gas market in the European Union (EU). The EU started to legally regulate the Member States’ energy markets in the 1980s, and in the late 1990s the association set a goal of establishing a single energy market operating on common rules adopted within the EU and implemented in legislation of the Member States. The process was institutionalized in the European Energy Union established in 2014. The scope of its competence covers, inter alia, the natural gas market. The study of the EU natural gas market in Ukrainian science of international law is considered to be required. Western scientific researches of the matter cover either the preliminary stages of harmonization or related areas only, such as EU competition law. The European Union is the largest regional energy market. It is the internal energy market currently in the process of forming the Energy Union, which covers electricity, natural gas, renewables, nuclear energy, energy security, environmental aspects on the territory of 28 Member States and a number of neighboring countries involved in it at different levels of integration subject to bilateral and multilateral agreements. The following sectors may be distinguished within the EU internal energy market: the natural gas internal market, the internal electricity market and the domestic market of tools to prevent climate change.
The EU internal natural gas market is an integral part of the internal energy market of the community and combines technical, economic, institutional and harmonized legal mechanisms that ensure the liberalized supply, transportation and distribution by the European natural gas infrastructure to final consumers in the EU, in accordance with high environmental standards and the grounds and legal acts of the association. It has internal and external dimensions, of which the external one at the community level has not yet been sufficiently governed. It provides discretion Member States in governance. The legal framework for the EU natural gas market functioning at the present stage is the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Third Energy Package, the transboundary network codes adopted by the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), as well as acts adopted for Energy Union functioning. The target market model allows final shifting from national gas markets to regional ones, which are already merged only by volume of consumed gas rather than state borders. Currently, the EU is actively involved in the natural gas market, which operates on the basis of pipeline liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, with the same legal regulation. The institutional structure of the EU internal natural gas market is, de jure, two-dimensional and multilevel. In particular, it consists of intergovernmental bodies and institutions (EU institutions, ACER), as well as nongovernmental entities - private sector operators associations (ENTSO-G). Accordingly, the structure is also four-tier: EU institutions at the upper level followed by the EU bodies, then the EU organs and, at the fourth level, the voluntary associations of the EU natural gas market that are non-institutionalized in the EU structure. This is primarily due to a large number of gas market participants whose interests do not always coincide, and are often even contradictory, requiring special protection mechanisms. Legal regulation of the EU relations with third countries in natural gas field encompasses a variety of political and legal principles. In relations with transit countries, the EU actively employs mechanisms for extending the energy acquis to such countries in order to create a unified energy environment (energy union) governed by the same legal rules. The main specialized instrument for such cooperation is the Energy Community and Association Agreements. In relations with countries-suppliers of natural gas, the main instruments involve political rather than legal acts, issued in the form of memoranda, road maps, communiqués. Even participation in joint economic structures (EEA) does not secure full acceptance of the energy acquis by such countries.
