The Romanian Government is preparing to repeal, by emergency ordinance, the legal provision introduced last year following the start of the corona-virus pandemic, which forbade the disconnection of electricity and natural gas consumers during the state of emergency, after the industry complained that the measure led to the accumulation of arrears on the payment of consumer bills worth almost 50 million euros.
The repeal comes at a time of significant increases in electricity and gas prices on wholesale markets, which are already affecting the prices paid by industrial end customers and which are beginning to be felt by residential consumers as well. The number of residential and non-residential end customers of electricity and natural gas who did not pay for electricity and gas consumption recorded in the period covered by the postponement of disconnections reached about 209,000, with an amount of outstanding debits of around 50 million euros at the end of May 2021.
Thus, the draft emergency ordinance stipulates that the ban on disconnecting of end customers of electricity and gas is revoked from the date of entry into force of the ordinance, but consumers with outstanding debts accumulated during the emergency period will not be able to be disconnected during the first 90 days after its entry into force.
