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 outside the centralized market.

CDR considers that by adopting the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 74/2020, the process of alignment and concordance of the primary legislation in Romania with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 943/2019 has started, mandatory and directly applicable already from January 1, 2020.

However, the draft law (L321/ 2020) adopted by the Romanian Senate on June 10, 2020 and registered in the Chamber of Deputies for debate and adoption repeals this provision, instead of unconditionally extending it to all participants in the electricity market and regardless of the year of commissioning of production capacities, which creates a major risk of expansion of the blockage of the last 8 years, especially given that the investment situation in the sector is still stagnant.

“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 delivery period longer 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 release specifies.

Practically, in the last years the private investments in the field of electricity generation have decreased dramatically.