European Commission will recommend the elimination of two taxes from the electricity bill – the tax for green certificates and the bonus for cogeneration, says ANRE vice-president Zoltan Nagy-Bege. At the same time, the impeached prime minister, Florin Cîțu, said on Thursday that the postponement of the payment of bills for the population and companies could be considered.

“I have some reservations about the solution found (by the Government on energy bill compensation), it is quite cumbersome, has some weaknesses and I would say that maybe there were other solutions easier to implement than this ordinance 118 and exactly in this direction I expect the recommendations from the European Commission. I expect from the European Commission the recommendation to tax precisely those companies that during this period make some additional income due to the evolution of prices in the wholesale markets, I expect them to propose the elimination of some taxes from the electricity or natural gas bills, such as for example the cogeneration bonus, which is applied in Romania for the support scheme for high efficiency cogeneration plants, the contribution to green certificates,” said Zoltan Nagy-Bege, at the Aspen Energy Summit 2021, according to Agerpres.

The vice-president of ANRE added that the elimination of the two taxes would produce from January a decrease of 100 lei of the electricity bill.

At the same time, Florin Cîțu claims that the postponement of bill payments for the population and companies could be taken into account.

“There are measures we can take into account. Last year we did this with taxes. Last year we postponed the payment of taxes for a period for companies. I would not see why we could not do this this year for individuals or for companies alltogether. There are measures that I consider good, I will take them into account and we can use them. We have already promoted the compensation, we have talked about capping. The postponement of the bills – is something we already did last year, so I would not see a difference compared to the exceptional situation from last year,” said Cîțu, quoted by e-nergia.ro.

The European Commission on Wednesday issued a series of guidelines for Member States, with short-term measures to protect especially vulnerable consumers, the temporary postponement of bill payment being one of the measures.