Forcing suppliers to deliver energy to household consumers at the lowest price is illegal, as it would violate European regulations and equal to a new Ordinance 114, Zoltan Nagy-Bege, vice president of the National Energy Regulatory Authority, said on Tuesday.

“With the multiple pressures to which the authority was subjected at the end of December and the beginning of January, when we were asked to force these suppliers to include the 5.7 – 5.8 million household consumers in the regulated market at the lowest prices of their portfolio, I would like to point out that, in our view, it would have been and is illegal, because it would violate EU Regulation 943 on the internal market of electricity and Directive 944, which had as transposition deadline 2020-end. These two regulations clearly state that prices must be made up by supply and demand, and no government, parliament or regulator has the right to intervene in prices, as states take steps to ensure competition in the market,” he said.

In his opinion, such an obligation would have the same effects as the Ordinance 114.

“Such an intervention by an emergency ordinance or by an ANRE order for a short or longer period would have violated the Regulation and the Directive and I would venture to say, even if this would create controversy, that it would be equivalent to a new GEO 114, with the same effects,” Bege was quoted as saying by Agerpres.

This would have increased energy prices for consumers who were already in the free market, he explained.

“Forcing a number of suppliers to provide cheap energy for 5.7 million customers, in addition to the fact that it is very difficult to achieve, but assuming that it is possible, creates very large financial losses for these suppliers. Losses that should be recovered from the other categories of consumers, which would have meant a price increase for other households, 3 million of which are already in the competitive market, or non-household consumers – exactly what happened with GEO 114, I hope we still remember,” stressed the vice-president of ANRE.