CREG approves Nemo Link BE–GB Access Rules v5: consolidated document, flexible market time units and later day-ahead nomination deadline

On 16 July 2026 CREG's board of directors adopted Decision (B)3253 approving Elia Transmission Belgium and Nemo Link Limited's requested amendments to the long-term, day-ahead and intraday explicit allocation and nomination rules ('access rules') for the Belgium–Great Britain bidding zone border. The approval covers both formal changes — consolidating all timeframes into a single 'Nemo Link Access Rules v5' document with Sections A–M plus six annexes — and substantive changes: a more flexible definition of the market time unit allowing products shorter than one hour (e.g. 48 half-hour intraday windows instead of 24 hourly ones), removal of the ability to invoke emergency situations to curtail long-term and daily transmission rights after the Day-Ahead Firmness Deadline, a recalculated Loss-Adjusted Day-Ahead Market Spread reflecting the European move to quarter-hourly products, extension of the daily nomination window from 10:00 CET to 14:25 CET on D-1, JAO-alignment procedural changes (removal of reserve auctions with standard bids, introduction of a contestation period) and alignment with the latest ACER-approved Harmonised Allocation Rules. CREG took the decision in coordination with Ofgem and reserves the right to revisit it if the two regulators' decisions prove incompatible.

Nemo Link is one of the post-Brexit interconnectors operating outside CACM and FCA, where capacity is allocated explicitly rather than implicitly, so its access rules are the sole mechanism through which traders obtain and nominate BE–GB cross-border capacity. Making the market time unit flexible is the precondition for Nemo Link to follow the European shift to quarter-hourly (and half-hourly GB) products, avoiding a granularity mismatch between the interconnector and the coupled markets it sits between. Removing emergency-situation curtailment after the day-ahead firmness deadline strengthens the physical firmness of allocated rights, reducing the risk premium participants must price into explicit capacity bids. The later 14:25 CET nomination deadline gives traders more time to align nominations with day-ahead market outcomes.

This is an incremental but economically meaningful maintenance decision on an external-border allocation regime. The core design tension for explicit allocation on GB borders is that participants must buy capacity and separately nominate flows, bearing spread risk that implicit coupling would internalise; the LADAMS compensation mechanism partially offsets this, and CREG explicitly frames the LADAMS recalculation as technical, preserving the principle and participants' compensation rights. The firmness change is the most consequential for price formation: shifting emergency-situation risk from holders to the interconnector after the DAFD should tighten the discount between explicit capacity prices and the observed day-ahead spread. The MTU flexibility clause is enabling rather than self-executing — it permits shorter products but the source does not state a date on which quarter-hour or half-hour products actually launch on Nemo Link. Legally, CREG stresses there is no EU framework: competence rests solely on Article 23, §2, 35° of the Belgian Electricity Act, with consistency achieved through informal bilateral coordination with Ofgem rather than a binding joint-NRA process — hence the explicit reservation to reopen the decision if Ofgem diverges. Stakeholder risk was low: only EDF Trading and Energy Traders Europe responded to the 15 December 2025–23 January 2026 consultation, with clarification requests and substantive remarks but no major objections, which allowed CREG to waive its own consultation under Article 40 of its rules of procedure.

Article 23, §2, 35° of the Belgian Electricity Act of 29 April 1999; CREG Decision (B)3253 of 16 July 2026, amending rules previously approved in Decisions (B)2475 (17 November 2022) and (B)1992 (10 October 2019). CREG states no EU legal framework applies post-Brexit (CACM Regulation 2015/1222 and FCA Regulation 2016/1719 no longer govern these rules).

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