The additional taxation of prosumers is not an obligation of a European Directive, according to a response provided by the European Commission to the prosumers association APCE.
According to the Association of Prosumers and Energy Communities (APCE), the Government of Romania wants to introduce a new tax on producers which use solar panel systems for self-consumption, justifying the measure as an obligation to transpose European legislation into Romanian legislation.
“Several institutions in Romania have officially declared that the introduction of a legal framework for this tax is mandatory. Among these institutions we mention the Ministry of Energy, the Legislative Council of Romania, the Economic Policy Commission and the Government of Romania. But the RED II Directive states very clearly that self-consumption taxation is optional for each member state. The European Commission mentions in the same directive that it does not recommend charging self-consumption, but leaves it up to each member state to decide this,” says Dan Pîrsan, president of APCE.
“The solar tax refers to the introduction of a tax for the self-consumption of electricity, that is, the energy produced by prosumers and consumed by them, for their needs. GEO 163/2022 allows ANRE to already introduce this tax for several categories of prosumers, such as the beneficiaries of the Casa Verde, Electric Up or RepowerEU programs, and from 2026 for all categories of prosumers,” according to an APCE press release.
“Article 21(3) is a “may” clause, which means that transposition by Member States is optional. Therefore, the Commission services do not consider the non-transposition of this type of provisions as a breach of the Directive (1),” states the answer received by APCE from the European Commission.
“The introduction of the ‘sun tax’ is not a measure imposed by the European Union, but a decision of Romanian politicians. It is serious that the institutions responsible for developing the legal framework did not understand the meaning of this European directive.
All the institutions in Romania and the governing parties have stated that they do not support this tax, but that they are obliged by the European Union to introduce it into the Romanian legislation. These statements are false and hide an interest contrary to Romanian citizens or denote a lack of competence.
We request the Ministry of Energy and the Government of Romania to draw up a GEO in which it is very clearly specified that Romania will not tax the self-consumption of electricity by prosumers.
If the current governing coalition wants to tax self-consumption, despite the recommendations of the European Union, we want and will demand the public acceptance of this decision by each governing party,” also said Dan Pîrsan.
