The Energy Regulation and Markets Review - Stikeman Elliott

Russia
b
c
an agreement between Russia and the European Union on cooperation in the
implementation of infrastructure projects for the export of natural gas from
Russia to the EU and joint work on electric power grids (March 2012); and
an agreement between Russia and the European Union on the parallel operation
of the unified power grid of Russia and the power grids of Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia (March 2012).
According to its Constitution, Russia is a federated state, in which state-controlled
facilities are run either by Russia (the federation), jointly by Russia and its constituent
entities (regions), or by the constituent entities of Russia independently. 6
Federal laws and other federal legal acts are adopted with respect to facilities run
by the state or jointly. 7
The country’s constituent entities exercise their own legal regulation, whereby
their laws and other legal acts do not run counter to federal ones.
The Constitution makes Russia responsible for establishment of federal policy
and federal programmes for economic development, the legal foundations of the unified
market, and the fundamentals of pricing policy, federal power grids, nuclear power and
security. 8 The main sources of national legal regulation of the energy sphere are the following
federal laws: 9
a Federal Law dated 26 March 2003 No. 35-FZ on Electric Power;
Federal Law dated 26 March 2003 No. 36-FZ on the Specifics of the Functioning
of the Electric Power Sector during the Transitional Period;
b Federal Law dated 21 November 1995 No. 170-FZ on Use of Nuclear Power;
c Federal Law dated 1 December 2007 No. 317-FZ on the State Corporation for
Nuclear Power ‘Rosatom’;
d Federal Law dated 31 March 1999 No. 69-FZ on Gas Supply in the Russian
Federation;
e Federal Law dated 18 July 2006 No. 35-FZ on Gas Exports;
f Federal Law dated 20 June 1996 No. 81-FZ on State Regulation in the Sphere of
Coal Mining and Use;
g Federal Law dated 27 July 2010 No. 190-FZ on Heat Supply;
h Federal Law dated 17 August 1995 No. 147-FZ on Natural Monopolies;
i Federal Law dated 29 April 2008 No. 57-FZ on Foreign Investment in Companies
of Strategic Importance for National Defence and Security;
j Federal Law dated 23 November 2009 No. 261-FZ on Energy Saving and Raising
Energy Efficiency;
6 Articles 1 and 5 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
7 Part 1, Article 76 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
8 Article 71 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
9 Hereafter, the mentioned federal laws and other legal acts are used in their latest versions,
including all subsequent amendments (as of 1 May 2012).
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