Filenews 8 March 2023 - by Eleftheria Paizanos
A proposal for a law will be prepared by the Parliamentary Committee on Energy, on the initiative of DIKO MP Chryssis Pantelidis, which will safeguard the interests of EAC Supply (as well as private electricity suppliers) in the case of commercial and industrial electricity consumers who change supplier, leaving the bills of EAC or their previous supplier unpaid.
The reason for the preparation of the draft law was a recent publication of "F", according to which, large customers of EAC chose a private supplier, in the context of the transitional competition regulation and left the Authority, without paying their debts to it. The problem of unpaid bills by customers who changed supplier had been pointed out to CERA by EAC Procurement, in the context of a public consultation on the right to massively change electricity supplier under concession.
According to information from "F", the draft law being processed by the Services of the Parliament will ensure that consumers who leave the EAC Supply will have to demonstrably pay their debts and only then will they move to other electricity suppliers. The decision to prepare a bill was taken during yesterday's session of the Trade Committee, following an intervention by MP Chryssis Pantelidis.
The DIKO MP, in a letter to the chairman of the Energy Committee, Kyriakos Hatzigiannis, had requested that this issue be discussed ex officio in the Commission. The aim, according to Mr. Pantelides, was to inform the Commission about the extent of the problem but also to discuss measures to solve it, taking into account the practices in other sectors of the Cypriot market. In view of the seriousness of the issue (which will gradually affect all energy suppliers in the electricity market), the Commission has decided to settle the problem by means of a draft law to be promoted by all parties.
