Public private partnerships and concessions are effective tools to allow governments to partner with the private sector to develop and finance key infrastructure projects. These forms of collaboration are particularly relevant in Russia, where infrastructure investment needs are estimated by the World Bank to be about USD 1 trillion.

In December 2017, CMS published the latest edition of its annual “Infrastructure Index” report, which compares the political, economic, and legal environments for investors in infrastructure in 40 countries and constitutes a guide to the world’s most attractive destinations for infrastructure investment. According to the report, the five most attractive destinations for infrastructure investment are the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

The new Lithuanian Concessions Law came into force on January 1, 2018. With the new legislation, Lithuania has adopted European Parliament and Council Directive 2014/23/EU on the award of Concession Contracts, which establishes a balanced and flexible legal framework for the award of concessions and ensures effective and non-discriminatory access to the market for all economic operators. The new Lithuanian legislation aims to ensure transparency and fair competition in the development of infrastructure and the provision of services of general economic interest, as well as the attraction of national and EU-wide private investors to the public sector.

The plans to regulate public-private partnerships have been in the program of the Montenegrin Government for at least ten years now. Despite its central importance to both the public and private sectors, a specific legislative and institutional framework in the area of PPPs is still not in place. Instead, PPPs are regulated by laws from several sectors and by the Law on Concessions. The main authoritative bodies in charge of implementing PPP projects are the Privatization and Capital Investment Council and the Concession Commission.

It’s been quite a wait, but the D4 Motorway PPP project should be coming to market in April. The project will involve the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of a 36 km stretch of motorway between Pribram and Pisek in the south west of the Czech Republic, with operation and maintenance of an adjacent 16 km of existing motorway.

Last year was a good year for the Bulgarian economy, which registered 3.6% GDP growth. The Bulgarian Government plans to further boost the economy in 2018, and initial projections vary from 3% to 4% growth. The main trigger for this will be the continuation of spending public funds on strategic infrastructure projects.

Croatia stands among the highest ranked countries when it comes to the compliance of its PPP legislative framework with international standards. Reports issued by international institutions such as the EBRD and the EIB have praised Croatia for its elaborate legal framework, strong institutional capacities, transparent procurement practices, easy access to justice (including arbitration), and a range of security instruments facilitating financing.

The constitutional and legislative structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is complex since it is composed of two entities – the Republic of Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) – and Brcko District (BD) as a separate unit, and the legislation is adopted on the state level, entity level, and – in FBiH  – on the cantonal level. This means that in BiH as such there is no unified Law on PPP, but rather 12 laws on PPP. While the RS and BD adopted their PPP laws in 2013 and 2010, the FBiH drafted a Law on PPP in 2009 which remains in the adoption process. In addition, the cantons in the FBiH have their own set of PPP laws.

Austria is definitely lagging behind in terms of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) penetration: According to recent data of the FTTH Council Europe, only one country worldwide has a worse penetration rate than Austria, while other sources suggest there are two countries below Austria. For this reason many initiatives have been implemented on municipal and provincial levels to provide Austrian households and undertakings with high-speed Internet access in parts of the country where a purely commercial assessment would not justify such investments. Obviously this is not yet enough.

The Ukrainian government has declared its intention to implement the success story of European countries in the sphere of public-private partnerships. In order to implement those ambitious plans the government has established a Project Office for PPP to work closely with international investors and lobby for relevant legislative improvements.

Slovenia: Fine-Tuning of the Tax System

In the beginning of 2018, Slovenia introduced several minor and mainly administrative changes to its tax legislation, mostly addressing and resolving inconsistencies in the legislation that had been detected in practice. 

Macedonia has started the process of liberalizing and privatizing the energy market as an obligation deriving from the Treaty establishing the Energy Community signed on October 25, 2005 in Athens (the “Treaty”).

For various reasons, 2017 was a remarkable year for the electricity sector in Ukraine. Chief among them, no doubt, was the long-awaited adoption of the new law on the electricity market. Ukraine’s electricity market has been liberalized not only because of the country’s commitments under the EU Third Energy Package, but also as the benefits of competition became evident in the wholesale gas market. This liberalization started almost three years ago and is still on-going, though admittedly not without challenges.

On the first anniversary of the introduction of Hungary’s long-awaited renewable energy support scheme (known as “METAR”), we look back at its first year and ahead to the future of renewable energy in Hungary from a legal perspective.

The Slovak energy market is in a state of transition. Energy security continues to be a key driver of the country’s energy policy. Long characterized by its reliance on gas from the Russian Federation, Slovakia continues to seek alternative sources to supply its energy needs. To a large extent, the solution has been to invest billions into nuclear power, while the development of renewable energy sources (RES) has so far been slow.

Supporting the generation of electricity and heat from renewable energy sources has a long-standing tradition in the Czech Republic.

In Western Europe, offshore wind farms have been successfully used for a long time. Meanwhile, no power-generating installation of this type is currently operating on the waters of the Baltic Sea under Polish control.

Greece has long been a regional energy market. However, drastic changes have been taking place which have the potential to transform Greece to an energy hub in the South Eastern Mediterranean region. The first step was made with the inauguration of the Greek-Turkish gas pipeline at the beginning of the millennium.