Bucharest District 1 Court upheld on appeal to a fine Hidroelectrica received from ANRE for making direct export to Hungary in the period December 2014 – February 2015, the energy company announced in a press release.

Specifically, Hidroelectrica sold energy on a centralized platform in Hungary run by Tradition Financial Services Ltd., a global leader in the brokerage of energy products, although it is mandatory to sell all of the energy produced on OPCOM in Romania.

According to Euro Insol, the insolvency administrator of Hidroelectrica, ANRE’s interpretation breach the following: free movement of goods within the Union, enshrined in Article 35 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; Directive 2009/72/EC on the internal energy market across the EU; Article 2 of Law No. 123/2012 and GEO 33/2007 on the organization of ANRE, which by Article 8 abolish restrictions on trade in electricity between Member States.

Moreover, it violates the supply license granted by ANRE to Hidroelectrica in 2013, which provides the company right to export power.

“Decision of the court has historical value. At the time the sentence becomes final, any producer, whether it is called Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica or Oltenia, will be able to conclude direct contracts to export energy on any of the markets of the Member States”, says Remus Borza, Hidroelectrica insolvency administrator.

“In 2012 we switched off <<the wise guys>> from the cheap energy produced by Hidroelectrica. After they took 1 billion euro from the company, the wise guys reinvented themselves with the help of officials from ANRE, which, by interpreting the legislation in a restrictive and anti-European way, they have created for traders a monopoly: the export of energy. Last year, Romania recorded a record export of energy – 8.7 million MWh. This year will reach 10 million MWh. Not one megawatt was exported by Nuclearelectrica or Oltenia. Hidroelectrica exported 15 MWh, was fined by ANRE and warned with the withdrawal of the supply license withdrawal. By this prohibition, state companies were deprived in the past two years of tens of millions of euros that have gone into the pockets of the same wise guys whose companies export the energy of Romania.

Does today’s officials who favor, even unwittingly, by such an interpretation of the law, energy traders, are the same who, on a voluntary basis, from January 2006 to June 2012, have not verified and have not taken measures to implement ANRE Orders 408/2006 and 445/2009 obliging all energy producers, including Hidroelectrica, to bid the entire amount of energy on OPCOM?”, Borza said.

Hidroelectrica was represented in court by the law firm PeliFilip and lawyer Irina Roxana Petre, the Company’s Legal Department Manager.