The Energy Regulation and Markets Review - Stikeman Elliott

Turkey
II
REGULATION
i
The regulators
Broadly speaking, Turkish energy policy is determined by the Ministry of Energy and
Natural Resources (‘the MENR’), while the market regulator is EMRA. EMRA is an
autonomous, public legal entity with administrative and financial authority to regulate
and monitor electricity, natural gas, petroleum and the liquid petroleum gas markets.
This entity is considered to be part of the executive branch, is affiliated with MENR,
and has independent regulatory power. EMRA is governed by the Energy Markets
Regulatory Board.
EMRA has the authority to create and approve tariff levels, issue licences, establish
quality service standards, and address certain other matters such as management and
consumer complaints arising from lack of quality or interruptions in the power supply.
EMRA often cooperates with the Turkish Competition Authority, and its decisions may
only be appealed to the Daniştay.
ii Regulated activities
The first part of the EML sets out the law’s goals and objectives, as well as the types of
market activity to be conducted, the policies for state-owned companies, the categories
of legal entities in the market and the types of restrictive licences to be issued, and the
conditions for granting them. The types of market activity that are regulated by the
EML are generation, transmission, distribution, wholesale activities, retail sale services,
and the import and export of electricity. Each market activity requires a licence to be
issued by EMRA. For generation activities, legal entities are required to obtain a separate
generation licences for each generation facility.
The application procedure for obtaining the licences is set out under the
Electricity Market Licencing Regulation (‘the Licensing Regulation’). 3 Accordingly, the
licence applicant must compile all the documents listed in the Licensing Regulation and
apply to EMRA. If EMRA determines that the application is complete and accurate,
it notifies the applicant in writing and the applicant pays 1 per cent of the licence fee
within 10 business days. 4 The non-payment of this portion of the licence fee results
in EMRA’s rejection of the application. EMRA’s assessment of a licence application
is based on a multitude of factors, including without limitation, conformity with the
objectives set forth in the relevant legislations, protection of consumer rights and the
impact on development of the competition and the market, and the experience of the
applicant in domestic and foreign markets. The Licensing Regulation also provides a
catch-all provision for EMRA’s application assessment process. Accordingly, EMRA may
request additional information or documents, and may call on the persons authorised to
represent the applicant to discuss the application for purposes of its assessment.
3 Published in the Official Gazette No. 24836 dated 4 August 2002.
4 The licence fees for the following years are announced annually by EMRA on its website.
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