Further to Article 63 of the Treaty, Article 66 makes an explicit reference to the Gas Forum and states that the Ministerial Council must decide on the meeting location for the Forum. At its June 2007 meeting, the Ministerial Council decided that the Gas Forum will convene in Maribor.
Chaired by a representative of the European Community, the Gas Forum brings together representatives of all interested stakeholders, including industry, regulators, industry representative groups and consumers. The Gas Forum adopts its conclusions by consensus and forwards them to the attention of the Permanent High Level Group, PHLG.
The Joint Gas Working Group meetings prepare the forthcoming Forum. In March 2009, the Secretariat presented the 12th PHLG a concept paper, where it took stock of the evaluation of the Joint Gas Working Group and proposed its replacement by a new "Gas Ring Group". According to the paper, the group should focus on advancing gas infrastructure investments at regional level. In its conclusions, "the PHLG agreed with the proposed approach and requested to be regularly informed on the outcome of the discussions."
