Poland plans to partially free the wholesale market as early as 2012 and to make PGNiG, the Polish state-owned gas and oil company, sell some of its gas on an open wholesale market. Sales could be made through auctions or through the commodity exchange. Poland would maintain a state-regulated tariff for end-user clients, in order to avoid free gas prices that would strengthen the monopoly, as tariffs are often lower than import prices. In April, the European Commission gave Poland two months to drop this system of setting tariffs, which effectively blocks competition to PGNiG, or it would sue the country in the European Court of Justice.
The obligation for gas companies willing to trade large amounts of gas on the Polish market to store gas in Poland, where PGNiG controls all the storage capacity, should be removed; companies would have to keep obligatory reserves anywhere in the European Union, and not only Poland.
The Polish regulator, URE, has allowed access by third parties to the Polish part of the Yamal gas pipeline that supplies gas from Russia to Germany via Poland and Belarus.