Emergency Ordinance 114/2018 caused chain losses throughout the energy sector, and the final consumers will be the ones who will pay all these losses, said on Tuesday, Niculae Havrilet, adviser of the Minister of Economy.

According to Havrilet, the European Commission has initiated several infringement proceedings against Romania, as a result of GEO 114, and one of them has a deadline of 26 of December. If Romania does not solve the problems, it will be sent to the European Court of Justice from 1 January 2020.

“We work and liaise with the European Commission, so that Romania will exit the infringement procedure and re-impose the functioning of the market according to the model of the European single market, not following the model of the years 2002-2003, where GEO 114 brought us back to. Regarding the discussion whether or not the cancellation of the provisions of GEO 114 will lead to price increases, I tell you that the biggest sin of the ordinance was that it did not foresee what will happen after the expiry of the terms of the ordinance: 2021, 2022 …”, said Havrilet, quoted by Agerpres.

He specified that the ordinance will have negative effects in the coming years. “When you intervene administratively in a free market, you can only have the position of an elephant in a porcelain shop. The same thing happened with GEO 114, there are obvious negative effects, and some that will be seen over years to come. Repairing the negative effects is difficult, because there have been losses throughout the chain, producers, suppliers… Alas, the most painstaking will be for the final consumer, because he will be the one who will pay everything that means cost recovery. In addition, producers are no longer interested in making investments because of the unpredictability and instability of the legislative framework,” the ministerial official said.