Negotiations with the European Commission on Milestone 119a, concerning electricity market reform through the replacement of coal in the energy mix, resulted in the penalty being reduced tenfold, as 25% of the milestone has already been fulfilled, interim Minister of Investments and European Projects Dragos Pislaru said at a government briefing on Friday.

'The Bolojan Government anticipated the discussions on closing the remaining 710 MW under Milestone 119a. During Minister Burduja's tenure, Transelectrica commissioned an adequacy study to substantiate the need to retain the major coal-fired units at Turceni and Rovinari that remain in operation. At the same time, I personally negotiated for Craiova and Govora. We are talking about supplying households and major economic operators in the absence of the gas-fired investments that were supposed to be completed, because you cannot shut down those capacities, especially during the winter, as you would be left completely exposed. All these matters had already been notified to the European Commission. The negotiations resulted in a considerable reduction of the penalty because Milestone 119a is part of a broader reform that has already been largely fulfilled. So, moving from a coefficient of five to a coefficient of 0.5 means a tenfold reduction in the penalty. Given that 25% of the milestone has already been fulfilled, with 3,000 MW of renewable capacity completed, the penalty would otherwise have been in the order of millions or tens of millions [of euros],' the minister explained.

He said amendments adopted by Parliament to legislation on decarbonisation risk blocking implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and leading to the loss of billions of euros in EU funding.

'The initiative in Parliament with that populist amendment banning us from shutting down power plants had no basis, in the sense that there was no imminent danger of having to shut them down urgently. All it could do was create a risk of reversibility, which the European Commission confirmed under Milestone 114, concerning decarbonisation, in Payment Request No. 2, and create problems for us, to the point where we had to send a notification to the Presidential Administration and the President asking that the amendment not be promulgated,' Pislaru said.

The Chamber of Deputies' plenary session on Wednesday adopted the bill on decarbonising the energy sector, which included a PSD amendment stipulating that the gradual decommissioning of lignite- and hard-coal-fired power generation capacity may take place only after new equivalent energy capacities have been built and commissioned.

The bill was also adopted by the Senate, while the Chamber of Deputies is the decision-making chamber in this case. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Cristian Anghelache; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)