CRE confirms approval of amended Italy North day-ahead fallback procedures and Shadow Allocation Rules; procedural dates now on record

The published CRE deliberation text (Délibération n°2026-175, 28 July 2026) confirms the previously recorded decision and adds the procedural chronology that was not previously captured: RTE formally submitted the TSOs' amendment proposal to CRE by letter dated 17 April 2026; the Italy North regulatory authorities held an electronic vote from 2 to 8 July 2026 in which all authorities voted in favour; and the regional authorities' agreement to approve the proposal after direct revision under CACM Article 9(5) is dated 8 July 2026, with the non-binding common position document annexed to the deliberation. The document also confirms the TSO public consultation ran from 13 November to 12 December 2025 with two respondents, both seeking clarification of the interaction between the Italy North fallback procedures and the future Central Europe fallback procedures. The substantive content is unchanged: removal of other capacity calculation regions' specificities from the body of the SAR into a dedicated annex, clarified information requirements for participation in fallback (shadow) auctions, a participant obligation to inform the JAO platform of applicable taxes and duties for invoicing and settlement, legal-reference and typographical corrections, plus regulator-inserted cross-reference to the annexed SAR and explicit termination conditions under which the Italy North procedures will be replaced by the Central Europe region procedures on their entry into force. Entry into application remains conditional on approval by the other concerned regulatory authorities, with publication by RTE on its website; no date is stated.

Fallback procedures are the allocation mechanism of record when single day-ahead coupling fails and borders decouple, so their content determines whether cross-zonal day-ahead capacity remains tradable during algorithm failures or missing input data such as order books or cross-zonal capacities. The confirmed chronology narrows uncertainty over process status: the regional common position is settled and unanimous, so the only outstanding gate before entry into application is formal adoption by the remaining Italy North authorities. For traders, the clarified registration information requirements and the new JAO tax-notification obligation define practical access conditions to shadow auctions, and the explicit sunset clause means the Italy North fallback regime is legally provisional and tied to the Core/Italy North capacity calculation region merger rather than to any independent review date.

On the reading offered here, this publication adds procedural rather than design substance, and its main value is confirmatory. The one genuinely useful new datum is the unanimity of the INERRF electronic vote held over 2–8 July 2026: it suggests no residual regional disagreement on either the SAR restructuring or the regulator-authored termination clause, which in turn implies that the outstanding national approvals are likely to be formalities rather than a live risk of divergence. That reduces, but does not remove, the execution risk sitting on the undated entry-into-application step. The submission date of 17 April 2026 against a decision date of 28 July 2026 also gives a rough calibration of the coordinated Article 9(7) timeline for a low-controversy regional amendment in this region — roughly three and a half months from national submission to CRE adoption, including the direct-revision route under Article 9(5). Where regulators judge drafting insufficiently clear but substance acceptable, direct revision appears to be the preferred instrument over a request for amendment, and this case is a clean example. Substantively, nothing here shifts the assessment. The fallback mechanism — explicit shadow auctions replacing implicit coupling on decoupled borders — is untouched, so price formation effects are negligible. Liquidity impacts remain marginal and ambiguous in sign: clearer participation requirements should ease onboarding, while the tax-notification obligation adds a compliance step that could deter marginal registrants operating across multiple fiscal jurisdictions in a low-frequency, high-urgency product. Cross-border capacity availability is mildly supported by legible contingency rules. Operational security is essentially unaffected, since this is a market-allocation contingency and not a system-operation instrument. The open items are unchanged and all undated in this source: remaining national approvals, RTE publication, and eventual supersession by the Central Europe fallback procedures.

Commission Regulation (EU) 2015/1222 (CACM) — Article 44 (fallback procedures), Article 9(5) (direct revision by regulatory authorities), Article 9(7)(e) (coordinated regional approval of fallback procedures), Article 12 (public consultation); CRE Délibération n°2026-175 of 28 July 2026, amending arrangements approved by CRE Délibérations n°2018-008 (11 January 2018) and n°2022-112 (14 April 2022); INERRF memorandum of understanding establishing the regional regulators' forum

Approval by the other concerned Italy North regulatory authorities, conditioning entry into application

Primary sources