Essent Belgium NV v Vlaams Gewest and others C-492/14 , [2016] All ER (D) 58 (Oct)
The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding that the provisions of Arts 28 and 30 EC Treaty, and of Arts 3(2), (8) and 20(1) of Directive (EC) 2003/54, Arts 3(2), (3) and 16 of Directive (EC) 96/92 and Arts 3 and 4 of Directive (EC) 2001/77, read together, should be interpreted as precluding legislation such as the regional legislation at issue in the main proceedings which imposed a scheme for the free distribution of green electricity through the distribution systems in the region concerned, while limiting the benefit of that scheme, in the case of the first piece of regional legislation, solely to green electricity fed directly into those distribution systems by the generating installations and, in the case of the second piece of regional legislation, solely to green electricity fed directly by such installations into the distribution systems in the member state to which that region belonged.
