Last year, the Government introduced successive reforms by decree to reduce the impact of the rise in electricity and fuel on families and businesses. The manager has set up a system of controls to ensure that energy companies avoid extraordinary profits by taking advantage of the price crisis (known as “profits from heaven”) and ensure that all measures implemented (such as a 20-cent discount) are properly implemented. per liter of fuel, among others).
The executive does not trust large corporations and a significant part of the functions of this new control and oversight structure has fallen to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) of the activity of large groups. In recent months, the agency has faced a barrage of new mandates, which has meant a tremendous workload for the Energy Department, which is already overwhelmed by a lack of human resources.
The CNMC’s leadership, under his command President Cani Fernandezwarned of the shortage of personnel and called for the workforce to be strengthened so that the energy field could participate in new functions and not neglect any of their usual occupations. The institution requested an increase in personnel from the Ministry of Finance, but currently only two-thirds of the claimed workforce expansion.
The CNMC has called for the creation of 42 new positions to assume its new strengths in energy matters. The Executive Board of the Inter-ministerial Remuneration Commission (CECIR), which is fully subordinate to the Ministry of Finance since it also undertakes the field of Public Service, Authorized 28 new civil service positions, The source of this paper is the CNMC, as confirmed by El Periódico de España, the newspaper of the same group, Prensa Ibérica.
Of the new positions approved, 18 are directly to the Director of Energy, eight to the Secretary-General for functions in energy matters, and the other two to the field of Transport. There are still pending authorizations for another 14 places requested by the body. Hoping to move forward soon. Currently, the CNMC Energy Directorate has a staff of 114 (5 civil servants and 109 workers).
In any event, the approval of officer positions does not imply immediate inclusion of officers to take on the excessive workload. “We don’t have soldiers anymore. Delegation is the creation of positions, from that moment the recruitment process should begin among State Administration officers and, once involved, must train them appropriately,” they warn from Competition.
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The government designed a system last September. power outages to avoid possible unexpected profits due to the increase in energy prices. The executive forced some of the nuclear, hydroelectric and renewable energy sources to return the supposedly extraordinary income they had earned by selling their electricity at wholesale market exorbitant prices (prices increased due to increased gas and CO2 emission rights). costs that these technologies do not cover).
Electric companies send out thousands of contracts each month to show conditions and selling price. These are the products they supply to customers with long-term bilateral agreements in order to avoid interruptions. The flood of contracts first reaches Red Eléctrica de España (REE), which is the operator of the electricity system and is determined by the Government to calculate how much they will return each month, and then sends them to the National Commission. Markets and Competition.
Later, the Government took advantage of the ‘macro-decree’ of anti-crisis measures due to the war in Ukraine and to review the system to reduce the extra income to include all contracts signed at high prices (over 67 euros per megawatt hour). For large utilities, set up a special surveillance system to make sure they don’t hide what are known as “unexpected profits” along the chain of contracts to pass inflated prices to the end customer.
Large electrical groups (especially Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, EDP or Repsol) They sell most of the electricity they produce directly to their own marketers, to companies integrated into their business groups. The government has decided to focus specifically on such intragroup contracts and will monitor the final price that marketers pass to the consumer. Hence the number of contracts companies are sending to REE and the CNMC has to review those that have skyrocketed, with the added workload as a result.
In recent months, CNMC had to check that all gas stations applied the 20-cent discount correctly Per liter for all drivers who have been decided by the government to stop the rise in fuel prices. And other extra tasks fell to the CNMC, such as an urgent recalculation (Recore) of thousands of renewable utilities tied to a return guaranteed by law, or a new calculation of how the cost of the electricity social bonus will be distributed (discount for vulnerable households) among all companies in the industry.