The Congress validates the decree that reduces the energy bill with the abstention of the PP and Vox

This package of measures will cost 3,000 million euros and with them 40% of Spanish households will be helped.

The plenary session of Congress has supported with a majority the royal decree-law that creates a regulated tariff for neighborhood communities with a community natural gas boiler, extends aid for vulnerable families of the electricity social bonus and creates a new category of beneficiaries for families that enter less than 28,000 euros.

This package of measures will cost 3,000 million euros and with them 40% of Spanish households will be helped to mitigate the impact of skyrocketing energy prices, according to the Government.

The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has defended that the fiscal initiatives and reduction of regulated costs have compensated by 39% the increase in the cost of energy on the final bill between the first half of 2021 and the same period of 2022.

According to their data, the cost of the measures adopted since June 2021 to help families is equivalent to 35,000 million euros, almost 3% of gross domestic product (GDP).

Ribera also stressed that the Executive knows that “we must not lower our guard” and that “probably the need to pay attention in the winter 22-23 will be added to those of the successive winters.”

The PP, through the deputy Juan Diego Requena Ruiz, has begun its criticism by focusing on the Iberian exception, which in his opinion “has triggered” the demand for Russian gas. He has also denounced the setback on the independence of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) to include “propaganda” in the electricity bill of consumers.

This last criticism is based on the fact that, from the decree, information on the impact of the VAT reduction on gas will be included in the electricity bill. He has also urged Teresa Ribera regarding the Midcat gas pipeline, arguing that the Government “was not able to keep the Maghreb gas pipeline open.”

Until the end of 2023

The decree includes eighteen of the 73 measures of the ‘Plan + security for your energy (+SE)’, extends the limit to the growth of the last resort tariff (TUR) for consumers of less than 50,000 kWh / year (families and SMEs) until December 31, 2023 and gives the possibility to communities of owners to also benefit from a regulated tariff that will reduce the cost of gas consumption by 50% to 1.7 million households.

This TUR 4, which will also be in force until the end of 2023, will cover the equivalent of the average consumption of the community of the last five years and, in the case of excesses, a surcharge of 25% will be applied on the new tariff, which will be divided into eight subsections of consumption.

The community of neighbors will have to install individual meters or cost allocators before October 2023, if they do not want to have a surcharge of 25% in the variable term on consumption since the community took advantage of the TUR.

Another measure is the extension of the discount that electricity companies make to the 1.3 million beneficiaries of the electricity social bonus, so that it will go from the current 60% to 65% for consumers considered vulnerable and from 70 to 80% for the severely vulnerable.

Together with these measures, the budget in 2022 and 2023 of the thermal social bonus for vulnerable households is doubled, which will double the average aid to 375 euros for heating per home and raise the minimum to 40 euros, compared to the current 35 euros.

Source: Huffpost