After almost 4 years of subsidized energy, the domestic electricity market is just as ill-prepared for liberalization, the international context is just as unpredictable, and the economic situation is even worse than in 2021, are some of the conclusions of a survey conducted by the National Trade Union Bloc (BNS), which looked at the way the subsidy scheme was applied from 2021 to 2025 and at its effects.

According to the survey, the only operated change was to narrow the category of customers eligible for protection, but even for them 'the support is not enough'.

BNS warns that the liberalization of electricity prices starting July 1, 2025 will hike household electricity bills (between 67% and 79%), amplifying energy poverty, outstanding payments to companies, and - together with the liberalization of energy prices for non-household consumers, it will dent the competitiveness of national companies compared to European counterparts.

'Our estimates of the likely evolution of prices show that the per-kWh fee in Romania will increase to seventh highest in the European Union, above the EU-27 average, compared to the previous 22nd position before the re-liberalization of prices. In an even more unfavorable scenario, Romanian households could pay the fourth highest price in the EU (after Germany, Denmark, Ireland) and could get energy three times more expensive than in Hungary and 2.5 times more expensive than in Bulgaria,' the cited survey states.

When using the 'artificial currency' of the purchasing power standard (PPS) to measure the prices, a 67-79% increase in the per-kWh fee in Romania would place household consumers at the highest level in the EU-27 (prior to re-liberalization, as per the PPS standard, the price of household electricity was already the fifth highest in the EU-27, close to that paid in Germany).

The report estimates that the (re)liberalization will push the inflation rate up by at least 2.8 percentage points, with the annual inflation rate going past 8.25% (from a current annualized rate of 5.45%). With the upcoming price changes for non-household consumers (the second round) expected to also affect living standards, the inflation rate could be even higher, the authors of the survey note.

In the opinion of the BNS, the government measures in the new support package will cut the subsidy to one third, in value, compared to the amounts allocated for subsidizing non-household bills.

'The support measures (scheduled for a ten-month period) will already have been partially offset by the rise in the standard VAT rate, including for utility bills,' the union federation said in the statement.

Regarding the support measures, namely the monthly income cap of RON 1,940 for single people, it already appears as undersized, since the value is taken from the statistics on the annual relative poverty income threshold for 2024, as communicated by the National Institute for Statistics in June 2025, namely RON 23,262 per person. However, in 2025, following the anticipated increase in prices by up to 8.25% and with frozen pensions, public sector salaries and pressures on the economy that could trigger a negative spiral in real wages, including in the public sector, the increase in the relative poverty rate is a certainty, the authors of the report argue.

'Our estimate, as we have shown, is that the at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate (AROPE) will return from 19% in 2024 to around 24% in 2025, which would entail a downgrade, through the 400,000 people who we expect to re-enter the poor category in 2025, bringing it to almost 4 million. Also, in the AROPE ranking at EU-27 level, Romania will drop from position 20 among the states with the highest rate of poor people to position 24, respectively the third highest rate of poor people in the EU,' the document also shows.

In this context, the BNS proposes a series of short-term solutions to counter the negative trend of energy poverty and the upward trend in the cost of living, specifically measures that can mitigate these developments and also discipline the market. The proposed set of measures includes: the re-evaluation of people considered poor according to their income, after a period of no more than three months from the expiry of the cap, in the sense of putting up the cap for which the subsidy is granted; setting up a crisis cell made up of representatives of the Energy Ministry, the Competition Council, the Public Finance Ministry, and the National Energy Regulatory Authority, which should monitor the price jumps recorded immediately after July 1 in suppliers' offers, given that many of them, just 24 hours before, and with no significant change in the purchase prices, were offering one-year contracts at considerably lower prices; possible price collusions on the energy market with the purpose of manipulating the price of electricity, as in 2024 ANRE had indications of such manipulations to the detriment of consumers.

Last but not least, the reasons why ANRE delays the validation of the documents for the settlement of energy subsidies to suppliers must also come in the crosshairs.

Between November 2021 and August 2024, the state budget paid out total energy subsidies worth RON 26.97 billion, with another RON 4.13 billion under analysis. The beneficiaries of this measure were both household and non-household consumers (44%, and 56% respectively).

As of July 1, the government decided to scrap the subsidy applied over 2021 - 2025, replacing it with a measure with a much narrower scope and linked exclusively to the 2024 poverty threshold. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Mariana Nica; EN - writing by: Simona Klodnischi)