The SME Chamber organises an informative webinar on the new Skills Pass system
11 April 2024
This morning the Malta Chamber of SMEs organised a webinar for its members in collaboration...
GRTU Petition on Utility Tariffs to be discussed at EP
09 February 2009
GRTU is pleased to announce that during this week the European Parliament will be discussing GRTU's petition against the Utility Tariffs.
GRTU's petition was initiated by GRTU's Director General Vincent Farrugia. The Petition is No 440/2006 in respect to Electricity Tariffs.
This is another step forward in GRTU's fight towards fair and equal payment of tariffs for utilities, issued by the State Electricity Corporation, Enemalta.
GRTU's Petition to the EU Parliament was moved by Maltese MEP Dr Simon Busutill, at the request of GRTU's Director General Vincent Farrugia.
GRTU's petition was initiated on the grounds that the Enemalta and The Malta Resources Authority (MRA) disregard the Electricity Directive (2003/54/EC) and continue to impose electricity rates on SMEs which are negatively discriminating them since they are being forced to subsidize part of the larger consumption made by larger companies (Consumption of over 1.2m KwH).
Data which has not been confirmed by Deliotte & Touchet or KPMG shows that 103 consumers actually use more then 1,200,000 Kilowatt Hour units, whilst over 40, 089 account holders use less then 1,200,000 Kilowatt Hour Units.
The European Electricity Directive does not allow for cross subsidization of tariffs and does not allow for discrimination against users. We therefore believe the above tariffs are in breach of community law. GRTU is confident that this time round no one from the European Commission will tell us that we have not exhausted the local legal hurdles.
GRTU also complained that the European Commissioner for Energy did not give sufficient consideration to GRTU's complaint, thus perpetuating the cost disadvantage of Maltese SMEs.
The GRTU continues to insist that we are not against incentives given to the large commercial consumers as they are important to our economy, this as long as SMEs do not foot the bill. Only the higher consumer is being helped by having part of the bill paid by the lower consumer, who is an SME and cannot sustain such an expense.
