Taking into account the Decision 66/2017/R/GAS on provisions of the natural-gas market rules functional to the start-up of the balancing regime that:

• Article 2 provides that 'the transitional provisions for the management of the markets referred to in Article 2 of Decision 312/2016/R/GAS, continue to apply until and no later than 31 March 2017 ";
• Article 3 provides that "with the execution of transactions concluded in market sessions related to the gas day March 31, 2017 the platform for the balancing referred to in Article 5 of Decision ARG/gas 45/11 shall cease to operate, and the agreement between GME and Snam Rete Gas referred to in paragraph 3.3 of the same agreement shall terminate";
• Article 4 provides that "GME shall define and publish, well before 31 March 2017, the operating procedures for the implementation of the provisions referred to in section 3";

GME informs that:

• The new MGAS Rules shall become effective from 1 April 2017, after the closing of the MGS session (11.00 a.m.) and the PB-GAS Regulations shall be simultaneously repealed. It follows that, after that date:

• PB-GAS shall cease to exist;
• the existing relationships on the PB-GAS shall not be transferred on the MGAS, neither as regards Participants/Users, nor as regards the offers (in particular, this implies that before April 1 - with the PB-GAS Regulations still in force – no bids/offers referred to 1 April or subsequent days shall be submitted, since at the time of the determination of the results of the MGS relating to those gas days, the PB-GAS Regulations would no longer be in force as "replaced" by the new MGAS Rules);
• in the MGAS, only Participants and Users admitted/enabled on the MGAS/MP-GAS will be allowed to operate on the MPL and MGS; namely, all Participants and Users currently active on the PB-GAS shall not be allowed to operate on the MPL and MGS unless admitted/enabled on the MGAS/MP-GAS;

• the switching of systems shall be carried out after the publication of the results of MGS session as of flow date 31 March 2017 (roughly on 1 April 2017 at 11 a.m.) and shall consist of:

• a records update of the MPL and the MGS, for which all users admitted to MP-GAS shall be authorized to operate;
• activation of the guarantees building block for MPL and MGS.

In order for such business plan to be carried out, the following measures to restrict certain operations are necessary, namely:

• The switching activities require IT platforms of the MPL and the MGS to be claimed off-line for two hours, as a precaution, on April 1 from 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. while the MGAS platform, to be claimed off-line for 30 minutes, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.. Simultaneously, bids/offers present on the MGAS platform’s book during the off-line period, will be automatically revoked;

• The submission of bids/offers on the MGS, which, as provided in the corresponding Technical Rules, is normally permitted starting from 9:00 a.m. of the 4th gas-day preceding the gas day to which the trading refers, shall be limited for the MGAS sessions related to the gas days 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 April, for which the sitting for the submission will be opened on 1 April at 1:00 p.m