On Monday, President Klaus Iohannis promulgated a law on extending the powers of some members of the regulatory committee of the National Energy Regulatory Authority, the Presidential Administration reports.

The law provides for the extension of the powers of the members of the Regulatory Committee of NARE for six months. At issue are the mandates of four of the seven members that make up ANRE’s Regulatory Committee, including the mandate of PSD-backed President Dumitru Chirica.

Note that instead of holding early elections and appointing a new leadership by the parliament, the Government decided to extend the powers of the current leaders by an extraordinary resolution.

On October 18, the Government issued an emergency resolution, which provided for a six-month extension of the powers of the members of the Committee on Regulatory Issues of the NCRECP, which will expire on October 23, 2022.

• In a few days, the mandate of the PSD-backed ANRE president and three other members expires: the Government continues them, citing the energy crisis

The government justified the urgency of extending the powers of 4 people by the fact that the normal functioning of NARE is “important in the conditions of the unprecedented energy crisis that European states have faced.”

“Thus, taking into account the need to ensure the continuity of the management and regulatory act at the level of the NCRECP and taking into account the particularly negative consequences of not adopting this draft normative act, which are the impossibility of functioning as an important institution of national interest in the field of electricity, heat and natural gas, taking into account the fact that these are emergency situations, the settlement of which cannot be postponed, it is proposed to adopt this emergency resolution,” the Government’s message reads.

The Chamber of Deputies adopted the project on 21 November 2022 as the first body, and on 19 December 2022 the Senate adopted the legislative proposal as the decision-making body.