The president of the Free Aluminum Union within Alro Slatina, Constantin Popescu, calls on the Government to apply “immediately” the provisions of the ordinance on the state aid scheme to support energy-intensive industrial consumers and claims that otherwise bankruptcy may occur in the coming weeks.

In a press release of the Free Aluminist Union quoted by Agerpres, Popescu points out that Alro, a large energy consumer, has not yet received support under the state aid scheme to support companies exposed to a significant risk of relocation due to the transfer of the cost of emissions of greenhouse gases in the price of electricity, this scheme being authorized by the European Commission in early May.

“The Free Aluminist Union draws the attention of the Romanian Government as well as of today’s political class on the desperate situation in which the big companies find themselves considering two aspects: 1. The support granted during the COVID-19 epidemic; 2. The obligation to ensure a business climate in the same level of competitiveness for the large electricity consumers in the European Union. We are already in the twelfth hour in terms of the functioning of large companies and job retention, due to the delay in implementing concrete, coherent and necessary measures to relaunch the Romanian industry,” the statement reads.

”Although the European Commission has approved offsetting for large energy companies for higher electricity prices resulting from indirect emission costs (carbon dioxide emissions introduced in the energy price), according to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS ) and the Government of Romania adopted the GEO establishing the state aid scheme to support companies exposed to a significant risk of relocation due to the transfer of the cost of greenhouse gas emissions in the price of electricity, until this date we did not receive any support,” say the trade unionists.