Romanian government is preparing to repeal, by emergency ordinance, the legal provision introduced last year following the COVID-19 pandemic, which forbade the disconnection or decoupling of electricity and natural gas consumers during the state of emergency, after the industry complained that the measure led to the accumulation of arrears on the payment of consumer bills worth almost a quarter of a billion lei, according to Profit.ro.

The repeal comes at a time of rampant increases in energy and gas prices on wholesale markets, which are already significantly affecting the prices paid by industrial end customers and which are beginning to be felt on bills and by households. The number of domestic and non-domestic final customers of electricity and natural gas who did not pay the equivalent value of electricity and gas consumption recorded in the period covered by the postponement of disconnections or decouplings reached about 209,000, with an amount of outstanding debits of about 249 million lei at the end of May 2021.

Thus, the draft GEO stipulates that the ban on disconnecting or decoupling final customers of energy and gas is revoked from the date of entry into force of the ordinance, but bad payers with outstanding debts on bills accumulated during the emergency period will not be able to be cut off during 90 days after its entry into force.