EU Energy Community welcomes Moldovan top court’s decision to cancel dismissal of energy regulator's directors

Chisinau, 11 December /MOLDPRES/-The Energy Community welcomed the decision of the Moldovan Constitutional Court (CC) to cancel the parliament’s decision to dismiss the directors of the National Agency for Energy Regulation (ANRE). The Moldovan top court proved that besides protecting “the constitutionality of the Moldovan laws, it also protects the legislation of the Energy Community, and not in the least, the concept of rule-of-law state,” reads a letter addressed to the chairman of the Constitutional Court, Alexandru Tanase.

“The legislation of the Energy Community compels all contracting parties, including Moldova, to assure the independence of its energy regulators, as their competency and independence are crucial for a transparent, honest and efficient activity of the country’s energy sectors,” says the signatory of the letter, deputy director of the Energy Community Secretariat, Dirk Buschle.

According to him, “ANRE’s independence was repeatedly affected by purely political influences”. The Energy Community considered that the parliament’s decision to dismiss four directors of the ANRE appointed two years ago violated the independence of the Moldovan energy regulation authority. The Energy Community noted that it had been ANRE’s second dismissal of its directors on purely political grounds.

On 8 December, the Constitutional Court ruled against the constitutionality of the parliament’s decision of 3 December to cancel its own decision taken in 2013 to appoint new directors in ANRE’s administration board.

The top court ascertained that the “designation/appointment” is a consumed act from the constitutional point of view, and respectively, cannot be subject to abrogation, except if there is a finding of the Constitutional Court during a control over the constitutionality of certain fundamental flaws affecting the validity of the act itself. In this sense, the contested act enshrines a legal nonsense cancelling an act that had already been consumed and had produced its effects.

(Reporter V. Bercu, Editor L. Alcaza)