Bogdan Tudorache
The Coalition for the Development of Romania (CDR) sends an alarm signal regarding the importance of unblocking the legislative framework to stimulate investments in new electricity generation capacities by ensuring the right of investors to sign long-term negotiated bank contracts (bilateral contracts, Power Purchasing Agreements-PPAs – e.n.), outside the centralized market. CDR carefully monitors the evolution of investment flows in the Romanian economy, a context in which it draws attention to the lack of private investment in one of the main strategic pillars of the economy – the field of electricity generation.
Thus, CDR considers that by adopting the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 74/2020 which ordered the completion of paragraph (2) of Article 23 of the Energy Law in order to establish the right to clinch PPA deals for new electricity generation capacities put into operation after June 1, 2020 began the process of alignment and concordance of primary legislation in Romania with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 943/2019, binding and directly applicable as of 1 January 2020.
“However, we note that the draft law (L321 / 2020) adopted by the Romanian Senate on June 10, 2020 and registered with the Chamber of Deputies for debate and adoption (PL-x 364/12.06.2020) repeals this provision, instead to extend it unconditionally to all participants in the electricity market and regardless of the year of commissioning of production capacity, which creates a major risk of exacerbation of the blockade of the last 8 years, especially given that the investment situation in the sector is still stagnant,” the Coalition claims.
“Although, in accordance with ANRE’s interpretation of the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2019/943, by order of the President of ANRE this right is established, starting with April 1, 2020, at least for all participants in the electricity market who conclude such contracts for a delivery period of more than 1 year, we are still very concerned that at the level of Parliament there is no availability to align and correlate the provisions of Law no. 123/2012 with those of Regulation (EU) 943/2019 in the sense of granting this right to all market participants and without other legislative restrictions,” the CDR officials added.
