Energy bills will be higher than people used to because this is the evolution of the market and not because suppliers want to steal, said on Thursday,Horia Constantinescu, president of the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC), in a conference.

“The idea of theft has as a constitutive element of this possible crime the intention. None of the economic operators could be held accountable for the intent to steal from consumers. The fact that some of the rules and some of their applications could not keep up with consumer expectations I believe were some of the important elements of the market malfunction. It is true that there have been cases where most consumers have been shocked to receive bills far more than they were accustomed to,” he said, according to Agerpres.

Since the end of last year, ANPC has started new discussions with suppliers.

“I was going to find out that most of the wrongly issued invoices had already been recalculated and we decided to open a much more direct communication channel to make sure that these things would follow their normal course. We sent a questionnaire asking the operators a number of questions, including the fact that we would like to know how many invoices were issued with deficiencies, how many were corrected because information that seemed contradictory circulated in the market,” Constantinescu added.

In his opinion, it is less important, even for the final consumer, to apply a sanction, regardless of its value.

“We need to defuse the market from this artificially created tension. Consumers should understand that there are authorities that are careful so they are not stolen, as it was said, to convey to consumers that the recalculation will be done not only due to the supervision of the authorities, ANRE and ANPC, but first of all that it is not a bad intention of the vast majority of suppliers of utilities. The evolution of prices does not depend on them. Most of the bills, apart from the help of capping and clearing, will have higher values than they used to have. It does not mean that someone is stealing, but that this is how the market has evolved,” the ANPC president stressed.