Article 13

1. Member States shall take the necessary steps to ensure that the accounts of natural gas undertakings are kept in accordance with paragraphs 2 to 5 of this Article. 2. Natural gas undertakings, whatever their system of ownership or legal form, shall draw up, submit to audit and publish their annual accounts in accordance with the rules of national law concerning the annual accounts of limited liability companies adopted pursuant to the Fourth Council Directive 78/660/EEC of 25 July 1978 based on Article 54(3)(g) of the Treaty on the annual accounts of certain types of companies (9). Undertakings which are not legally obliged to publish their annual accounts shall keep a copy of these at the disposal of the public at their head office. 3. Integrated natural gas undertakings shall, in their internal accounting, keep separate accounts for their natural gas transmission, distribution and storage activities, and, where appropriate, consolidated accounts for non-gas activities, as they would be required to do if the activities in question were carried out by separate undertakings, with a view to avoiding discrimination, cross-subsidisation and distortion of competition. These internal accounts shall include a balance sheet and a profit and loss account for each activity. Where Article 16 applies and access to the system is on the basis of a single charge for both transmission and distribution, the accounts for transmission and distribution activities may be combined. 4. Undertakings shall specify in their internal accounting the rules for the allocation of assets and liabilities, expenditure and income as well as for depreciation, without prejudice to nationally applicable accounting rules, which they follow in drawing up the separate accounts referred to in paragraph 3. These rules may be amended only in exceptional cases. Such amendments shall be mentioned and duly substantiated. 5. The annual accounts shall indicate in notes any transaction of a certain size conducted with related undertakings. CHAPTER VI ACCESS TO THE SYSTEM

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-02 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.