JAO Issues Amendment No. 31 to Participation Agreement, Revising Participant Registration and TSO Designation Attachments

Joint Allocation Office (JAO) published Amendment No. 31 to its Participation Agreement, updating Attachments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. These attachments govern submission of general/financial/operational contact information, registered participants' declarations of acceptance of Additional Rules (e.g. Shadow Allocation Rules, GB-Belgian border rules, Viking Link, ElecLink, Swiss and Ukrainian border rules), bidding zone border selection for Daily Capacity Allocation (Swiss and Ukrainian borders, explicit daily allocation borders including Italy-Montenegro and North Macedonia-Greece), Intraday Capacity Allocation on Ukrainian borders, Shadow Allocation Rules registration across numerous EU borders, and TSO designation procedures for German-operated multi-TSO borders (Germany-Czechia, Germany-France, Germany-Netherlands, Germany-Austria, Germany-Switzerland).

This amendment updates the core onboarding and administrative framework through which market participants register for, and gain contractual access to, JAO-operated capacity allocation processes spanning daily, intraday, forward and shadow allocation across a wide set of EU and non-EU interconnected borders. Changes to TSO designation rules and registration attachments directly affect how Physical Transmission Rights are attributed and nominated, which is operationally material for participants active in cross-border capacity markets, even though the amendment does not alter substantive allocation methodology.

Amendment No. 31 is a governance/administrative update to the JAO Participation Agreement rather than a substantive redesign of any specific allocation methodology. Its significance lies in standardizing and updating the contractual onboarding attachments participants must complete to access Daily, Intraday, Forward and Shadow capacity allocation across a broad footprint of borders (Swiss, Ukrainian, Italian, Balkan, Nordic/GB interconnectors, and multiple German multi-TSO borders). The TSO designation provisions for Germany-Czechia, Germany-France, Germany-Netherlands, Germany-Austria and Germany-Switzerland are particularly operationally relevant, since they determine which TSO's nomination process acquired Physical Transmission Rights are routed through, with a stipulated seven-working-day notice period for any change in designation ahead of a delivery period. Because this is a signed bilateral contractual amendment (JAO and each Registered Participant), it becomes effective per-participant upon execution rather than on a single system-wide go-live date, and the source document does not specify an aggregate effective date, consultation period, or regulatory approval step - this is a private commercial/contractual update, not a formally regulated process requiring NRA sign-off.

JAO Participation Agreement - a private bilateral contractual framework between Joint Allocation Office S.A. (Luxembourg) and individual Registered Participants, incorporating Additional Rules as defined under Article 4 of the Agreement

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