This is the transcript of the message delivered by Silvia Vlăsceanu, executive director ACUE, during the 2016 Energy Strategy Summit, held on May 31 at Snagov Palace. For a sum-up of the main ideas, check our previous material: 27 essential ideas after Energy Strategy Summit 2016.

Many thanks, especially to those who had the patience to stay up to now here in the hall.

I must say that speeches today focused heavily on issues dedicated to the oil and natural gas, less on the energy generation – in the first session, there was one representative of producers -, but no one at all on matters related to the operators for distribution and supply of electricity and gas. Apparently, in this sectors we have no problems whatsoever, everything is solved! That would be nice, having no problems!

As you know, the distribution sector is fully regulated and the regulator is always carefully following the activities of Distribution System Operators for power and natural gas. Sometimes, the regulator puts too much focus on some issues that may not even exist at the moment, or problems that are discovered, when they are yet to arise! My opinion, which I have formulated before, is that we are already overregulated. There are already too many regulations for the energy transmission, and I mean both for the transmission system operators and for the Distribution System Operators for electricity and gas. These rules are not only impractical, but they are very difficult to track and correlate, by the very departments in the regulatory authority included. I do not want to blame now a lack of cooperation, or not having a permanent dialogue with leading officials. But there are communication problems and they occur mostly at the executive level, at lower-levels within the Authority. It’s ultimately a recommendation and a request that the Authority might help us improve this relationship with the departments within the Authority.

Back to the topics mentioned earlier – affordability and competitiveness – please do not believe that the distribution system operators and suppliers of last resort, members of our association, do not put in the center of their activity and are not concerned about customer satisfaction and welfare. In the end, the electricity and gas market cannot function without client. Therefore we find, lately, an increased competition, even between members of ACUE. Competition is very fierce and each day we read in the media about one company trying to take over other company’s customers, about suppliers becoming more and more active and about how, although they are part of a group of distribution operators in a certain concession area, they are trying to enter another area and “steal” customers from the existing provider. It is a very good thing in the end, if it is in the benefit of the customer, and suppliers act in this regard.

In respect to the customers, industrial customers or residential customers, but mainly for the vulnerable customers, the Authority should watch more carefully to the rights that customers should benefit from, regardless the supplier they choose.

Customers can change their supplier within 21 days and are allowed to do this without any obligation to pay the outstanding invoices. I mentioned, at the time when this decision has been made, and I still maintain my position that it was not right for a customer to change the supplier before paying the outstanding bills. In other European member states there is no discussion and a customer does not even think not to pay the bills up to date. Here, for the moment, we have work to do in respect to education.

Back to the rights of the customers, we start from the very definition of universal service which is provided for in Law 123. Universal service is mentioned as the supply of energy at reasonable prices, comparable in terms of quality, to household and non-household customers, and SMEs with less than 10 million euro turnover. We believe that we should not speak simply about supply, but about a right that must accompany the client, whatever the provider the client will choose.

Going forward, in a year and a half the market opening or the competitive component in market will reach 100%. We should already begin discussions to identify how exactly this market will function. For the moment, there is this dedicated platform on OPCOM, the Centralized Market for Universal Service. This is still unknown, and yet we have no idea what the Authority view on this is, if the Authority intends to keep this market component, how the Authority sees this changing of the suppliers of last resort, in a competitive way. It is not easy at all to change contracts for more than a million customers operating in each zone, overnight.

We should discuss these things with the Authority, because they are more important, and more fuzzy than some others that appear simply for, in plain English, picking holes in somebody’s coat. The operators’ activity was always so controlled and so regulated that it is very hard not to respect the law, whatever the law. Be it the electricity law, the public procurement law, the competition law, I strongly believe that operators, at least ACUE’s members, did not disappointed and did not disappointed their customers in this regard.