Liberalization “was made for the benefit of suppliers, not Romanians” and repeated offences of suppliers will be sanctioned, according to a new emergency ordinance, at the level of turnover, announced on Tuesday, in a press conference, the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu.
The AFEER Supplier Association recently reiterated that the increase in bills was caused not by suppliers but by several factors, including rising international energy prices.
However, Minister Popescu claims that abuses “continue to happen” and that it will “go to the level of other fines” – either 2-5% or 5-10% of turnover. “We are talking about repeated violations, no one is absurd,” he said, referring to the fines recently imposed by the authorities.
“We have discussed before at the ministry, we presented to the Prime Minister, and ANRE agreed that, through the Ordinance transposing Directive 944 that we are working on – and we will come with it via the Government by Emergency Ordinance – to amend, and the repeated offences of the distributors, of the suppliers who load the invoices, put estimated prices (…) all these small things that bother the customers, bother the Romanians, to sanction them at the level of the turnover. (…) ANRE presented us the structure of the fines that have been given – a fine of 10,000 lei that a supplier has is paid immediately and it looks away and things continue to happen. We want to stop these things by cohertion, by changing legislation, so that they know that if they do something like this repeatedly, obviously we are not talking about abuses from the state authorities,… they will have to pay at the level of turnover,” said Virgil Popescu, who explained that is waiting ANRE’s report which will be soon presented to the Parliament.
Popescu said he was never satisfied with the way liberalization was done. “If we did not intervene, as a ministry, people were in queues, on the roads, to move in a month… millions of Romanians, to move to other suppliers. Basically, that liberalization was done not for Romanians, but for suppliers,” said on Tuesday the Minister of Energy.
He also said that the authorities have extended the inquiries at the level of gas suppliers also to electricity suppliers and that the Government is waiting for the results of the inquiries.
