The Nordic Countries joined the Continental European Compensation system for cross-border electricity transmissions on 1 January 2004

ETSO, European Transmission System Operators, has agreed on a revised compensation system applied to cross-border trade of electricity for 2004. The European Commission and CEER, Council of European Energy Regulators, have preliminarily accepted the new mechanism.The renewed mechanism, previously applied by the 12 countries in Continental Europe will now expand to Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary. Poland will join as from 1 July. The most significant change to the mechanism applied in 2002 and 2003 is that the market parties are no longer levied separate fees for covering the transit transmission costs. The cross-border tariff levied from electricity exporters was removed. The tariff in 2003 was 0.5 €/MWh. Each participating country includes the costs caused by the system in its national grid tariff. Electricity injected from perimeter countries continues to be subject to an import fee of 1 €/MWh. In this way, this fee is levied for instance on electricity imported from Russia. Correspondingly, the fee was removed from the border between Germany and Denmark. The new system is expected to deliver a significant improvement in cross-border trade between European countries. ETSO's related press release can be found at www.etso-net.org under Public Documents/Press Releases. Further information:
Fingrid Oyj
Juha Kekkonen, + 358 (0)30 395 5120 or + 358 (0)40 560 5274