The EU's right to share electricity with your neighbours is in force, and eighteen member states have not put it into national law
Energy sharing lets one household's surplus reach another without passing through a supplier's book, which in a body of law built around the supplier as necessary intermediary is close to a right of local exchange. The billing mechanism makes it concrete: the shared unit is deducted from the recipient's meter reading rather than sold to them, so the supplier's role in that transaction becomes arithmetic rather than commerce. Everything then turns on the clause preserving cost-reflective network charges, because the right can be priced to nothing in either direction. Charge as though the electron crossed a member state and sharing is a hobby; charge zero and the network is funded by everyone who lives in a flat with the wrong roof. The infringement round is what should temper the story: a right that exists in Brussels and not in Paris, Madrid, Dublin or Stockholm is a right eighteen governments have declined to specify, and the specification is where the substance lives.
The EU's right to share electricity with your neighbours is in force, and eighteen member states have not put it into national law
Article 15a has applied since 17 July. On 25 September the Commission sent letters of formal notice to two-thirds of the union for failing to transpose it.
The European Commission announced on 24 July 2026 that its revised electricity market rules apply from 17 July 2026, giving customers, in its words, "new opportunities to generate and share renewable energy with neighbours and communities". Two months later, on 25 September, the Commission opened infringement procedures against eighteen member states for failing to communicate full transposition of the two provisions concerned: the amended Article 4 on free choice of supplier, and the new Article 15a on the right to energy sharing, both introduced by Directive (EU) 2024/1711.
The eighteen are Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden. Each has two months to respond, after which the Commission may issue a reasoned opinion. That leaves nine member states not on the list, among them Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Cyprus. [UNVERIFIED: that nine-state residual is arithmetic on the Commission's list, not a Commission statement. Absence from an infringement list means a government has notified full transposition, which is not the same as a household being able to share a kilowatt-hour with a neighbour today.]
Article 15a is worth reading rather than summarising. It gives all households, small and medium enterprises and public bodies, plus any further customer categories a member state chooses to add, the right to participate in energy sharing as active customers. Sharing may be organised by private agreement between the parties or through a legal entity, and a third party may act as organiser, handling communication, billing and facility management. It must happen within the same bidding zone, or a narrower geographical area if the member state says so, and for larger participants the shareable capacity is capped at 6 MW within a local or limited area. Small households, up to 10.8 kW on a single connection or 50 kW in a multi-apartment building, are not required to take on supplier obligations. Mechanically, shared electricity is deducted from the participant's metered consumption over an interval no longer than the imbalance settlement period.
That mechanism carries a clause that decides how much the right is worth: the deduction operates "without prejudice to applicable non-discriminatory taxes, levies and cost-reflective network charges". The directive creates the right and leaves the price of exercising it to national regulators.
Some have already chosen. Portugal grants collective self-consumption schemes and renewable energy communities using the public network a full seven-year exemption from CIEG charges, the general economic interest component of its network tariff, under Order No. 6453/2020 as extended by Order No. 1177/2024. [UNVERIFIED: the Portuguese exemption, its duration and the instrument numbers are taken from REScoop's transposition tracker, last updated 22 June 2026; the orders themselves were not read.] [NEEDS DATA: the network charge actually applied to shared electricity in at least two more member states, and how many of the nine non-infringing states have an operating scheme rather than a statute.]
Eurelectric, the European electricity industry association, argued in October 2024 that the definition was too loose to implement, that it did not clearly cover peer-to-peer trading, collective self-consumption and energy communities as distinct structures, and that implementation must "fairly allocate costs, taxes, network charges and compensation to avoid discrimination in the market". Its warning names cross-subsidisation and distortion of competition. The position predates the rules applying by twenty months, so it is an objection of record rather than a description of what has happened.
Why it matters
Energy sharing is the provision that lets one household's surplus reach another without passing through a supplier's book. In a body of law otherwise constructed around the supplier as the necessary intermediary between generation and consumption, that is close to a right of local exchange, and it is the most structurally consequential thing in the package. The billing mechanism makes the point sharper than any rhetoric about communities: the shared kilowatt-hour is subtracted from the recipient's meter reading. It is not sold to them. The supplier's role in that transaction is arithmetic, not commerce.
The cost-reflective charges clause is where the right gets priced, and it can be priced to nothing in either direction. Levy the charge as though the electron had crossed a member state and sharing becomes a hobby for people who enjoy paperwork. Set it at zero and the network that made the sharing physically possible is paid for by everyone who lives in a flat with the wrong roof. Portugal's seven-year full exemption is a defensible answer to a transition problem and an indefensible one as a permanent settlement, which is presumably why it has an expiry.
Eurelectric's complaint should be read as interest as well as analysis, since an intermediation margin is what the provision erodes, but self-interest does not make it wrong: an unpriced right to bypass the network is a subsidy, and it is regressive.
The infringement round is the part that should temper the whole story. A right that exists in Brussels and not in Paris, Madrid, Dublin or Stockholm is a right that eighteen governments have so far declined to specify, and specifying it is where the substance lives. Deadlines deferred by eighteen months from the directive's general transposition date, which was 17 January 2025, were deferred precisely because these two articles were understood to be hard. They were still missed.
What's still unknown
- How many of the nine states not facing infringement have a functioning energy sharing scheme, as opposed to conforming legislation on the books.
- How the network charge on shared electricity is being set where sharing does operate, and whether any regulator has published its reasoning.
- Whether Article 15a in national law is being read to permit sharing between unrelated parties at bidding-zone scale, or narrowed in practice to a single building or a defined community.
- Whether the Commission publishes a member-state implementation tracker for Article 15a specifically.
- How the right interacts with the older renewable energy community and citizen energy community definitions in Directive 2018/2001 and Directive 2019/944.
- Whether any of the eighteen respond within the two months, and what a reasoned opinion would change in practice.
Sources
- European Commission, 24 July 2026: new EU energy rules for cleaner, more secure energy and stronger consumer protection
- European Commission, 25 September 2026: action on complete and timely transposition of EU directives, key decisions on energy
- Directive (EU) 2024/1711, Article 15a, on EUR-Lex
- Eurelectric, 31 October 2024: implementing energy sharing needs more clarity
- REScoop transposition tracker, Portugal, updated 22 June 2026
Public comments
Loading…