Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will announce the national support plan aiming to relief households and businesses from exorbitant electricity rates. The televised message will be broadcast at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday.
The new measures are scheduled to be presented in detail on Friday, May 6, by the finance and the energy ministers.
However, the plan is going to have no immediate effect but be implemented as of June.
Meanwhile, main opposition party left-wing SYRIZA has submitted an amendment to the Parliament demanding that consumers will not pay the “adjustment clause” to the power companies until the issue is solved at the courts The amendment stipulates what power companies will not cut electricity supplies to the consumers who do not pay the clause, which is normally a few hundreds euros per bill.
It is noted that consumers’ protection institute INKA filed on Wednesday the mass lawsuit of over 1,600 people against the public power company PPC questioning the legality of the adjustment clause. The court will take up the issue in June. More lawsuits against the remaining 19 power companies in Greece will follow in the next days.
The chairman of INKA told state broadcaster ERT on Thursday morning that the adjustment clause cannot be valid for consumers who made contracts with the PPC before 2013, when the clause was first introduced.
Worth noting that even if the “Fixed energy supply rates” contracts assured there would be “no adjustment clause”, power suppliers deliberately implemented it without bothering to inform consumers in advance as they ought to.
Meanwhile, socialist KINAL/PASOK has prepared another amendment demanding the imposition of a ceiling on the retail price of energy. The amendment stipulates that “citizens will not have to pay more than 10% of what they paid before the energy crisis began (1/5/2021)” and that they will have the opportunity to pay their accumulated debts in 240 installments. Furthermore, that power outages in households and businesses will be prohibited when they are charged more than the ceiling of 10%.
Meanwhile, fuel price that has “frozen to 2 per liter at least in Athens in the last couple of months is expected to hit over 2.12 on Friday due to EU’s new embargo on Russia and the increase of interest rates in the USA that have strengthen the US Dollar toward the Euro.
