80In the third place, as regards the condition that the public service obligations at issue must be clearly defined, transparent, non-discriminatory, verifiable and guarantee equality of access for EU natural gas undertakings to national consumers, it should be noted that, as regards the non-discriminatory nature of those obligations, Article 3(2) of Directive 2009/73 allows public service obligations to be imposed generally ‘on undertakings operating in the gas sector’, not on certain undertakings specifically. Moreover, Article 3(1) of the directive provides that the Member States ‘shall not discriminate’ between natural gas undertakings ‘as regards their rights or obligations’. In this framework, the system of designating undertakings responsible for public service obligations may not exclude a priori any of the undertakings operating in the gas distribution sector (judgment of 7 September 2016, ANODE, C‑121/15, EU:C:2016:637, paragraph 71 and the case-law cited). Thus, any difference of treatment which may arise must be objectively justified.
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