The companies fined by ANRE with 537.5 million lei for “their non-compliance with the specific legal provisions regarding transactions on the wholesale electricity market” will appeal the decision in court and have a high chance of winning, sources told Energynomics.
“Sanctioned companies have a high chance of winning,” said the quoted source, without providing additional comments.
“The investigation concerned transactions carried out on the PC-OTC market, an anonymous market where market participants do not know who they are trading with until the end of the trading session when they are notified by OPCOM who is the contracting party for each individual transaction. We will prove in court that the very way the market is organized makes a possible agreement between the market participants impossible,” said, at the same time, in a reaction, Tinmar, one of the fined companies.
ANRE announced, last week, that it fined four companies “for violating the provisions of art. 5 of Regulation (EU) no. 1227/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 25, 2011 regarding the integrity and transparency of the wholesale energy market (REMIT), ANRE applied contraventional sanctions to the investigated participants in the wholesale electricity market, in the total amount of 537,503,319.49 lei.”
Tinmar Energy received the largest fine, amounting to 363,982,051.85 lei. The Nova Power & Gas was fined 100,106,676.12 lei. Freepoint received a fine of 22,917,465.30 lei, and Eft Furnizare – of 50,497,126.22 lei.
“The PC-OTC market operates strictly on the basis of EFET-type contracts according to which each party can act either as a buyer or as a seller. So the reversal of positions in the market is a consequence of the functioning of this market and not a contraventional element”, claim Tinmar officials.
“In addition, the wholesale trading market in Romania is a small market in terms of number of participants. Our company runs contracts with a number of 12-14 eligible partners, and of these, some are only buyers, and the other, only sellers. Traders who carry out transactions in both directions of trading are on average 4 in a year and, under these conditions, it is impossible not to meet repeatedly in the market, in both directions of trading – sale-buy”, they say Tinmar officials.
“We emphasize that the traded product – 5MW BSLD, equivalent to the amount of 3,715 MWh – is a standard product on the OTC market. Thus, over 85% of the transactions concluded on this market have this product as their object.”
