Ministry official Niculae Havrilet: Energy sector’s development thwarted by maze of conflicting laws

 

"The main element that must be considered and put an end to is legislative instability. They say that there's only one stable thing in Romania: legislative instability," the government official said.

 

Havrilet explained that he reviewed the amendments to Law No. 123/2012 - the framework law on electricity and natural gas, and found that in eight years the respective act had been changed 12 times through other laws and ordinances.

 

"For example, a regulation covering household consumers, who are generally vulnerable, has been changed 11 times in one year. Therefore we can no longer talk about stability capable of leading to streamlined processes and the cut in bureaucracy and downtime. We are practically single-handedly sabotaging the growth and development of our energy sector through this maze of many a time conflicting laws," the ministerial official went on to say.

 

In his opinion, the solution is to set in place a new Electricity Law and a new Natural Gas Law, simplified to the most and transposing the best experiences from advanced countries.

 

"Energy is the heart of any economic activity. In order to have cheap energy, we must encourage energy producers within a stable framework," Havrilet concluded.