Again, in the last 2 years, legislation has been introduced that is supposed to help consumers, but in reality it contains certain “loopholes” that make it impossible to implement or implement late, putting consumers at a disadvantage. So who was this law written for?

We tend to blame mistakes and incompetence. But is this the reason?

This fall, new categories of consumers have been added to take advantage of the limited price. And this is even under conditions when the place of assistance to these people was not in the law on energy, but in the policies of some ministries, the subject of which is the development of policies to support such people who are also electricity consumers. Assistance to single-parent families and families with more than 3 children is the task of the Ministry of Family Affairs, and assistance to the sick is the task of the Ministry of Health through its branches. Why was this logical and normal design not followed?

In addition, the law on capping energy prices has been amended in such a way that it has the advantage of capping the price at only one point of consumption (the obligation was removed later). why Probably because of a desire to penalize those with many houses (an aspect that the Fiscal Code could also address).

Why were these financial assistance packages or “sanctions” for those with more homes included in the energy law?

• It can show how much they care about people, that there is a willingness to take from the “rich” and give to the “poor”!

• Maybe because for this measure to help patients, families, etc., funds from the state budget were needed, which are not available, and then they found a way to help them with other people’s funds? Accordingly, through this mechanism, those who give money to these social categories are actually suppliers, and then the state will pay this money to suppliers!

• Perhaps only with the aim of reducing the burden of these compensations on the state budget, because the smaller number of consumers who will benefit from the restriction means less funds from the budget!

Let’s analyze how this law was created and written:

– The law came with a huge bureaucracy, which means that those who should use these rights cannot get all the benefits, because they do not go through the bureaucratic stages and do not submit declarations in time that would give them the right to use the price cap. This situation is confirmed by the following aspects:

• Extending the validity of the law (the text of the law was tentatively created as early as October 2022) so that it overlaps with the vacation period, when people are busy with other things, and therefore there is no time to submit these declarations. , Fewer declarations mean fewer people who have to benefit from the price cap, and therefore less money that the government has to pay.

• creating complex statutory situations that would cause as long as possible delays in billing providers so that the state would pay as little as possible during the winter months when the cost of compensation would be high. Postponing the state’s payment of these compensations as much as possible until the summer, when requests for late billing compensation can be submitted, gives the state time to collect money from energy companies and thus reduce its financial effort at the beginning of the year.

– replace in the law the concept of “consumer”, who will receive compensation for the use of medical products, single-parent families and families with more than 3 children, with the concept of “client”, who will receive compensation for the use of medical products. medical devices, single-parent families and families with more than 3 children probably halved the number of those who would actually be able to take advantage of this provision during the winter months, and again puts the number of those who benefit from the restriction at a lower rate, and the money that the state has to pay for limiting compensation will be less.

– the introduction of retroactivity (absurd, illegal, unconstitutional) also aimed at limiting the number of those who should have benefited from compensation in the 4th quarter of 2022, but also uncertainty for providers and a repeated delay in billing from the 4th quarter, which would require nine smaller funds from the state budget for the compensation of bills in these months and the delay in payment of these funds, taking into account the delay in billing.

– the construction of this law leads to the determination to point the finger at suppliers, NARE, the Ministry of Energy, and not at the main beneficiary – the State Budget. Of course, there is nothing wrong with collecting more money for the State Budget, but it can be done transparently.

The more customers who don’t file returns, the less the government has to pay because it has to pay less to offset the cap.

The more complex the invoicing method, the more time it takes to modify IT systems and the later invoicing. But the longer the bills are delayed, the later the state will pay compensation. Let’s not forget that this chaos is at the end of the electricity sales chain.

Electricity producers, the majority share of which belongs to the state, collect the price of electricity every day, pay excise duty and VAT to the state budget every day. Due to the delay in billing for electricity by the final consumer for 3-4 months, there are delays in the payment of compensation for the limitation of electricity only to the last supplier that sells energy to the consumer, during which time the state can collect the funds necessary for compensation.

We estimate that approximately 80% of consumers who were required to submit declarations for the choice of place of consumption would not have done so by 1 January 2023, a proportion that we believe will persist for the situation of other categories that still have to submit declarations by the end of this year. A rough calculation shows that in January 2023, the state would have to pay according to the law on capping energy and gas prices, promulgated on December 13, 2022, after deducting the price cap compensation of at least 40%.

Those who will have to lose electricity consumers who, in addition to the bureaucratic complications to which they have been/are exposed, will receive large bills that accumulate over several months of consumption, but there will also be those who in the future (next 2-3 years) will cover all costs, associated with numerous and frequent software changes, interest and bank fees with these delays. Unjustified costs that will lead to higher electricity prices as a result of these decisions.

N. Ed: Dumitru Kiselice is the president of the Intellectual Energy Association