Electricity prices will remain high in Romania for at least the next 4-5 years, as long as we use coal for energy production, said on Thursday Bogdan Chiritoiu, president of the Competition Council.

“It is the EU’s policy to make polluting energy expensive, economically unattractive. So as long as Romania and other EU countries need this expensive coal energy, prices will remain high. And at least we in Romania do not see a possibility to replace coal in the next 4-5 years. This means that at least in these 4-5 years we will see high prices for electricity,” said Chiriţoiu, according to Agerpres.

He explained that the market price is given by the most expensive energy, in this case – coal.

This means that authority support measures for domestic, vulnerable and industrial consumers will remain in place, the competition authority president said.

“On gas, however, my expectations and hopes are that the price of gas will fall. Russia is Europe’s largest source of gas and, for various reasons, it is speculated that Russia has reduced gas supplies at the moment and for this reason we see this surge. After Russia’s deliveries increase, the price will probably fall not to the level of the pandemic, but to the levels before the pandemic, like 2019,” the president of the Competition Council specified.