RO lawmakers may liberalise once again electricity and gas prices for households

The expert committee for industry in Romania’s Parliament endorsed the abrogation of several articles of the emergency ordinance (OUG) 114/2018, including those regulating the electricity price for residential users and compelling the local natural gas producers to sell their output at a regulated price, Economica.net.

The provisions were enforced under emergency ordinance for a three-year period starting March 2019. If the Parliament passes the bill under the new form, the energy market regulator ANRE will have 90 days to revise the regulations and de-facto liberalise the energy market once again.

Notably, the article compelling natural gas producers to sell their entire output at a regulated price had already been amended under ordinance 19/2019, in the sense that only the households will pay the regulated price while the industrial users have to buy gas on the free market.

As a legal detail, the provision in OUG 19 should be abrogated as well to fully liberalise the market, since only abrogating the provision in OUG 114 would have no legal effect. Separately, the expert committee also approved to repeal the provision compelling energy companies to pay a 2% turnover tax.

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