The National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) and the National Authority for Consumer Protection (ANPC) will start a series of controls on natural gas suppliers that have concluded firm price contracts for a year and which now notify household consumers that they want to change the price, announced the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu.

“There is a speculative price trend at certain suppliers, we also discussed with ANRE and they will start, together with Consumer Protection, some controls to the gas suppliers, to all the gas suppliers who have concluded contracts with a firm price for one year, firm offer a few months ago, and now notify customers that they want to change the price, and this is not possible. ANPC can check and can sanction very well the deceptive offers, you can not lie the people, and ANRE can… fine them with up to 5% of the turnover,” the minister said, according to Agerpres.

Virgil Popescu explained, in the context, that the suppliers that made losses in one year recovered these losses during the next five years, through tariffs.

“Over time, all suppliers, even if they made a loss in one year, this loss was recovered in the next five years also by tariff. In the end, a supplier cannot transfer one hundred percent of the risk to the end customer. This is excluded and we will not accept this,” Popescu stressed.

On the other hand, he announced that the authorities intend to grant a compensation of the price of the invoices for those who have an income that does not exceed the average one.

“What we want to do during this period, because we do not want to leave the Romanian consumer without protection against these increases, is to accelerate the approval in Parliament of the Vulnerable Consumer Law and this will happen as the parliamentary session begins. We want to we accelerate the approval of the law and move its deadline from October 1, 2022 to January 1, 2022 in the new budget or in 30 days, (starting) with October 1, November 1 this year,” the Minister added.