Romania

Overall assessment

Updated December 2022

The Citizen Energy Community Definition was been transposed into national legislation through an Ordinance, which was finalized at the end of 2021. It is foreseen that ANRE, the national energy regulator, will develop implementing regulations in order to provide more detail. As such, the transposition is still in progress. At the moment, the EU level CEC definition serves as the de facto definition of CECs in Romania. This provides very little legal clarity and will require further precision in order to be able to be usable by stakeholders.

In response to a referral to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) for failure to transpose the Renewable Energy Directive, Romania passed an Emergency Ordinance in November, 2022. For the most part, it takes the same approach as the transposition of CECs. As such, it more or less copy-pastes the definition of RECs from the Renewable Energy Directive.

It is notable that under the Ordinances, ANRE shoulders much of the responsibility for the implementation of RECs and CECs at national level. However, ANRE does not have any specific duties on ensuring compliance with the definitions. Given the many tasks ANRE will be given, it will already be difficult to ensure it is properly resourced to fulfill all the duties it has been given. ANRE should also be able to properly oversee compliance with the definitions and guard against corporate capture.

Overall, until further clarity is provided regarding the criteria and procedure for becoming an energy community, it will not possible to set up an energy community with any legal certainty.

Detailed assessment

Criteria of EU definition reflected in national definition

Yes, technically – both for RECs and CECs

Level of detail in the elaboration of principles contained in EU criteria

No – copy-paste of the directive creates a lack of legal clarity

Clearly defined purpose

No – copy-paste of the directive – both for RECs and CECs

ICA cooperative governance principles reflected

Yes, to the extent that the CEC definition includes principles of openness and a non-commercial purpose

Legal entities allowed

Unclear.

Citizen participation is ensured

No.

Designated authority to oversee

For both RECs and CECs, ANRE is responsible for developing further regulations to operationalize the energy community concept in Romania. However, it has not been given any authority to oversee compliance with the criteria of the definitions. Given that ANRE has many tasks related to implementing the concept of RECs and CECs, it may be hard to dedicate additional resources to properly overseeing respect for the definitions.

Number of definitions

2

Coherency between both definitions

No explicit connections have been made, given that the provisions on RECs and CECs have been copy-pasted from the EU Directives.