EconMin Popescu: Government approves emergency ordinance to support large energy consumers

The government approved an emergency ordinance on Thursday to support large energy consumers, this being an amendment to the ordinance that allowed the support of 15 branches of industry, said on Thursday the Minister of Economy, Energy and Business Environment, Virgil Popescu, at the end of the government meeting.

"Today we have approved an emergency ordinance on supporting large energy consumers. It is an amendment to ordinance 81 approved last December. An ordinance that allowed the support of 15 branches of industry. I repeat, the Romanian producers who have direct employees and indirectly over 100,000 employees, where there is a very high risk of relocation. I remind you, and I do not want this to be forgotten, that by Ordinance 114 the PSD [the Social Democratic Party] government practically blew up the electricity and natural gas market, and the price of electricity went up a lot, thus greatly reducing the competitiveness of the Romanian industry. In fact, large companies such as Sidex Galati, Alro Slatina and many others have found themselves unable to cope with the pressure of electricity prices," said Popescu.

The Minister of Economy emphasized that the state scheme he proposed in December 2019 was approved by the European Commission. It was again transposed into an emergency ordinance in the legislation, and the applicant's specifications and guide will be published by order of the minister within two days from the publication in the Official Gazette of the ordinance and the start of the procedure for granting this state aid.

"Basically, we can say that we have brought competitiveness back to the Romanian industry again. We have saved several hundred jobs. We have saved the Romanian industry from a government that has only increased the price of electricity," Virgil Popescu added.