The European Commission has a draft on the table that replaces the network code every power-generating device connects under. It was published on July 8, 2026 and feedback closes on August 25, 2026 at 23:59. It is not an amendment to the 2016 rules: the act is titled "establishing a network code on requirements for grid connection of generators and repealing Regulation (EU) 2016/631", and it runs to 99 pages plus 27 pages of annexes.
The reason it matters here is that the 2016 code has no electric vehicle in it. This one does.
Bidirectional charging gets defined, then classified
The draft creates two objects that did not exist in EU grid-connection law. A V2G electric vehicle is a vehicle powered fully or in part by an electric motor that can inject power into the network over V2G supply equipment. V2G electric vehicle supply equipment, V2G EVSE, is the infrastructure that carries energy from the network to the vehicle and back, excluding wiring and cables. There is also a V2G electrical charging park, one connection point with several vehicles on it, and a supply equipment document its owner files with the system operator.
Then it sizes them:
- EV1: 0.8 kW to under 2.4 kW
- EV2: 2.4 kW to 50 kW
- EV3: above 50 kW to under 1 MW
Under the current code an 11 or 22 kW bidirectional wallbox falls into Type A, the generic lightest class for anything that generates. Under the draft it is an EV2, with its own requirement set written for it.
Those requirements are specific. An EV1 or EV2 has to ride through the 47.5 to 52.5 Hz range on a fixed staircase, hold its target output through frequency changes, and run limited frequency sensitive mode in both directions with a droop of 5 percent, frequency measurement resolution of 10 mHz or better, and active power accuracy within 5 percent of Pmax. The response time is the part hardware people will read twice: no more than 0.5 seconds for a 30 percent setpoint change and 1.2 seconds for a 90 percent one, with switching between generating and consuming "as fast as technically feasible".
And it must carry a data exchange interface that modulates active power in and out, without undue delay, on an instruction received at its input port.
Certification becomes a pair, not a product
Article 52 does something the current code never had to: it ties two manufacturers together. Compliance for V2G rests on individual type-test certificates issued for the supply equipment on one side and, for AC connections, for the vehicle on the other. The two certification schemes "shall be harmonised, cross linked and consist of associated procedures on data exchange, communication handshake and technical power transfer".
That is the per-combination problem written into law. A charger is not certified; a charger paired with a car is.
The draft's answer to the fact that nobody can certify against a standard that does not exist yet is Annex III. Recital 27 says it plainly: there are no fully harmonised European standards capable of demonstrating compliance, so the Commission writes a temporary technical annex, and during its validity it is the exclusive reference for conformity assessment and certification of V2G equipment. National compliance schemes have to incorporate it. It expires five years after entry into force, by which point European standardisation is expected to have caught up.
Annex III itself is a test-procedure document for AC and DC, vehicle side and equipment side. It is built on digital communication throughout: setpoints arriving over digital communication with processing times between 4 and 55 seconds, limit values transmitted from the equipment to the vehicle, an allowance that digital communication may take up to a second. It also permits a reference test device so that full protocol stack certification is not required for every combination.
The gap: no protocol is named
Search the draft and its annexes for OCPP, IEC 63584 or ISO 15118 as a named requirement for the data exchange interface and you find nothing. Recital 28 gestures in the direction of the vehicle-to-charger link, saying communication standards "including those prescribed under" AFIR and Regulation (EU) 2025/656 should be followed. Those govern how a car talks to a charger. The link from the charger to the system operator, which is the one a management backend actually sits on, is referred to repeatedly and never specified.
Security is handled the same way. Article 7(2) says that where the regulation refers to a data exchange interface, system operators shall require it to comply with the cybersecurity requirements of the Cyber Resilience Act. That is a duty, not an interface.
The Open Charge Alliance filed on July 30 asking the Commission to close it, in four points: name IEC 63584, which is OCPP 2.1 published as an IEC standard, as the standard for the V2G EVSE and the system-operator data exchange interfaces in Annex III; reference the OCPP 2.1 Certification Programme in the Article 49 national compliance schemes as "a single, harmonised route to demonstrate compliance"; accept IEC 63584 as satisfying Article 7(2); and support remote adjustment of grid-code parameters over it so that deployed equipment can "remain aligned with evolving grid requirements".
Their argument for the first point is the one worth repeating: "Without a clearly specified and harmonised interface, different system operators could introduce their own technical and security requirements." A charger sold across the EU would then meet one grid code and several incompatible ways of proving it.
The fourth point is the one with a cost attached. Grid codes change. If the parameters of an installed fleet cannot be pushed remotely, the alternative is a visit per charge point.
When any of this bites
Not soon, and not in 2027. Entry into force is twenty days after publication in the Official Journal, and from there:
- general requirements for power-generating modules apply at 24 months
- the V2G articles apply at 36 months for new V2G types that receive a type approval from that date, and at 48 months for all new V2G equipment placed on the market
- Annex III expires at five years
- Articles 40 to 57 of the 2016 code keep running for the first 24 months
Existing equipment is grandfathered: recital 32 keeps the 2016 technical requirements applying to modules already in scope "until the end of their lifetime or until they are significantly modernised".
The 2027 date people quote for bidirectional charging is a different instrument. That is the ISO 15118 requirement introduced by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/656 under AFIR, and it is not on this clock. Conflating the two produces a deadline that does not exist.
What a site operator should take from it
Two things, both of which are backend questions rather than hardware ones.
The response requirements are moving into a range where the instruction has to arrive fast and be executed by the charger, not negotiated. A backend that already sends power setpoints over OCPP is doing the shape of the thing the code describes; the difference is the tolerance.
And the remote-parameter point in OCA's submission is the practical one for anybody who will still own their chargers in four years. Whether the final text names a protocol or not, the ability to change a grid-code parameter across a mixed fleet without sending a van is what decides how expensive the next revision of this regulation is. On Plugchoice that runs over OCPP across brands, which is the same reason a site can mix hardware in the first place.
The window closes on August 25. Feedback is public on the Commission's register, and 22 submissions were in as of August 21.
Sources: European Commission, Have Your Say initiative 14165, draft act and annexes, Ares(2026)6819642, published July 8, 2026; Open Charge Alliance, July 30, 2026.