Electricity prices are skyrocketing and the electricity bill is becoming an increasingly noticeable expense for Swedish households. Several parties have proposed that consumers should be compensated, for example through price caps, support payments or a regulation of the electricity market.
This week, the government presented a new proposal which states that the authority Svenska kraftnät’s surplus should be returned to consumers in the form of a kind of high-cost protection.
However, such a model will be difficult to implement, says Julian Nowag, professor of EU law, in an interview with SvD.
“Doesn’t seem targeted”
– The problem is that the support does not seem to be aimed at the households that really have difficulty paying their electricity bills, but at the households that have consumed a lot of energy. There may be households here that heat up their outdoor pool when it’s cold, he tells the newspaper.
The European Commission has given member states permission to implement emergency measures to help households. But according to the guidelines, such measures must be directed at households that risk being hit extra hard, rather than paying out support to the biggest consumers.
The government emphasizes that it is the Energy Markets Inspectorate that will test the proposal’s compatibility with EU regulations.
– There it says that there must be justified cases and you talk about exceptional cases and you talk about particularly vulnerable households. Some kind of limitation has been set anyway, says Rebecka Thuresson, head of unit for the department for network regulation at the Energy Market Inspection, to SvD.