At the end of January, the Government approved another amendment to Regulation No.298/2022 Coll., now with an updated title on setting electricity and gas prices in an exceptional market situation and on setting the related maximum permissible extent of the customer’s economic benefit. The amendment brings with it two major innovations and related obligations for large companies.

The first innovation, which has been announced since the end of last year, when large companies were included in the regulation, is the introduction of the concept of “maximum permissible economic benefit”. Its amount is graded in article 8a et seq. of the regulation, which also provides further details on the limits for business groups. An important piece of information is that all forms of state energy support, i.e. both concessions due to capped prices and funding from subsidies, provided from 1 February 2022 will be cumulative. Companies that exceed the maximum permissible economic benefit will then be obliged to return the relevant part of the money to the state.

The second novelty, which is closely related to the first, is the multiplied administration. Not only is there a new obligation to deliver a statement to the energy trader every quarter (one for the entire year was sufficient before the amendment), but also to deliver a report to the Ministry after the end of each quarter on the assessment of excessive economic benefit. This also entails a change in the relevant annexes of the regulation. The declarations in Annexes 7 and 8 shall apply only for the period until 30 April 2023, after which the models in Annexes 10 and 11 shall apply. The report on the assessment of the excess economic benefit is then attached as Annex 13.

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Author: Veronika Odrobinová, Olga Králíčková