Gazprom investment. On 5 July 2006, the Federal Law, "On Gas Export", was passed, nearly unanimously, by the State Duma and on the 7 July 2006, by the Federation Council. On 18 July Putin signed the new legislation and on 20 July 2006, the law was published. It gave Gazprom the exclusive right to export natural gas from Russia. On 4 September 2012, the European Commission, a Brussels-based competition watchdog, announced an anti-trust investigation into Gazprom's activities. This was based on "concerns that Gazprom may be abusing its dominant market position in upstream gas supply markets." On 21 May 2014, in
Gazprom is Gazprom Export LLC, founded in 1973 and before November 1, 2006 known as Gazexport, which has a monopoly on gas exports to countries outside of the former Soviet Union. The majority of Russian gas in Europe is sold on 25 year contracts. In late 2004, Gazprom was the sole gas supplier to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Finland, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Slovakia. It provided 97 percent of Bulgaria's gas, 89 percent of Hungary's gas, 86 percent of Poland's gas, nearly 75 percent of the Czech Republic's, 67 percent of Turkey's, 65 percent of Austria's, about 40 percent