SOFIA (Bulgaria), December 22 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria’s energy regulator said on Friday it has imposed two fines totalling 6 million levs ($3.6 million/3.1 million euro) on Power Distribution South, a unit of Austrian energy group EVN.
As this is the second time the company has committed the same offence, the size of the fine is explicitly defined in Bulgaria’s Energy Act, the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission’s chairperson, Ivan Ivanov, said during a press conference on Friday.
Under Bulgaria's legislation, when a power distribution company changes electricity meters, it should obtain the signatures of two witnesses of the process who do not work for the company.
The energy regulator said Power Distribution South has filed two protocols for changed electricity meters without the necessary two signatures and has thus been fined 3 million levs for each of the two cases, as this is not the first time the company has failed to meet this particular legal requirement.
On Thursday, Bulgaria’s competition regulator said it has fined EVN’s Bulgarian units Power Distribution South and EVN Bulgaria Elektrosnabdyavane 1.9 million levs each.
The fines were imposed because the local units of power utility groups CEZ and EVN were implementing joint strategies and practices discriminating against independent traders outside the respective groups and restricting trade in electricity at freely negotiated prices, the competition regulator said.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)