The liberalization process aimed at the creation of an internal gas market has significantly changed the gas transmission business and increased the need for transparency. In this respect specific obligations for TSOs have been introduced through the European as well as national legislation.

Even though information is made available by individual TSOs, network users may still face difficulties when wanting to transport gas across Europe due to differences in market models applied across the European network. The Transparency Platform has been therefore designed to facilitate access to transmission networks by, among other things, making all the information available in an organised and structured way on a single website.

The Platform is based on information that is already published by individual TSOs on their websites. Provision of information that may currently not be subject to obligatory publishing is made available by TSOs on voluntary basis as their contribution to the creation of a single European gas market. TSOs apply the confidentiality rules they are subject to under their national legislation.

The capacity units used by individual TSOs are converted to one common unit (kWh/d) using conversion factors supplied by the TSOs. Those conversion factors are available for users to consult. As an exception to the rule, units used for capacity product prices are not converted and will be shown as published by the TSO (regulator).

The Transparency Platform also offers to its users to search for a route across the European gas transmission networks by selecting only the starting and the ending points. A route summary is consequently generated giving the users an overview of available monthly capacities along the route and other useful information such as available contracts, applicable tariffs, balancing rules, capacity allocation mechanisms as well as dynamic data such as flows, nominations, renominations and interruptions.

The Transparency Platform also publishes links to individual TSOs´ websites dedicated to TPA information offering thus a useful navigation tool for gas network users.