The Government wants to erase the budget debts of electricity producers in exchange of assets and has developed a procedure in which they will be able to swap to the Ministry of Energy active production assets in exchange for extinguishing the tax receivables ANAF has over them.

The debt swap measure refers to ” the difficult economic and financial situation of economic operators such as Hunedoara Energy Complex SA and Bucharest Electrocentrale SA, which have power generation capacities of particular importance in maintaining the safety level in operation of the National Electricity System, respectively dispatchable units defined and regulated by the secondary legislation issued by the National Regulatory Authority for Energy, as the competent authority “.

The Government Emergency Ordinance on the Regulation of Certain Financial-Tax Measures Required for the Safety of Electricity Supply, published on the website of the Ministry of Energy on 28 March, proposes “maintaining a steady production in the respective plants, vital for the safety of the functioning of the national energy system”.

The evaluation carried out by the public authorities and institutions involved showed a major difference between the installed power and the available power of the power generation units, which shows the need to adopt measures to ensure the safety of the National Electricity System.

Apart from the competition concerns raised by such a measure (erasing the debts to ANAF is a form of state aid), it is unclear how the point 7 of Article 2 would be applied:

(7) The Ministry of Energy and the economic operators shall conclude a takeover protocol by which the functional energy assets referred to in paragraph (1), including their value, will be transferred in the public property of the state

when the state already owns, through the Ministry of Energy, in fact, 100% of the shares of the company Hunedoara Energy Complex S.A. and 97.51% of the shares of Electrocentrale Bucureşti S.A!