Article 11 1.

early warning level (‘early warning’): where there is concrete, serious and reliable information that an event which is likely to result in significant deterioration of the gas supply situation may occur and is likely to lead to the alert or the emergency level being triggered; the early warning level may be activated by an early warning mechanism;

alert level (‘alert’): where a disruption of gas supply or exceptionally high gas demand which results in significant deterioration of the gas supply situation occurs but the market is still able to manage that disruption or demand without the need to resort to non-market-based measures;

emergency level (‘emergency’): where there is exceptionally high gas demand, significant disruption of gas supply or other significant deterioration of the gas supply situation and all relevant market-based measures have been implemented but the gas supply is insufficient to meet the remaining gas demand so that non-market-based measures have to be additionally introduced with a view, in particular, to safeguarding gas supplies to protected customers in accordance with Article 6.