MPs from the opposition parties OĽaNO-NOVA and Freedom & Solidarity on Monday announced that they're considering initiating a parliamentary no-confidence process against Prime Minister Robert Fico over the recent chaos with the public's energy bills.
The opposition asked for the dismissal by Wednesday, February 8 of all of Fico's own nominees and those of Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko in the managing and supervisory boards of the energy distribution companies in Western, Central and Eastern Slovakia.
"We also ask Robert Fico to remove Economy Minister Peter Žiga as the direct superior of the aforementioned figures by the same day. Third, we demand that Fico takes an unambiguous stance ... allowing people to learn ... what they should do with their current energy bills," said Matovič.
As he added, if Fico ignores these demands, the two parties will initiate an extraordinary parliamentary session to debate Fico's own removal.
At a press conference after his Monday talks with Economy Minister Peter Žiga and representatives of power utilities and the Office for Regulation of Network Industries, Prime Minister Robert Fico recommended that people should wait for new invoices for advance payments to be prepared by their electricity providers based on a new decree on price regulation in power engineering.
Following their talks with representatives of power utilities and the Office for Regulation of Network Industries on Monday, Prime Minister Robert Fico and Economy Minister Peter Žiga stated that electricity will make a U-turn back to the level seen in 2016 for the whole of Slovakia. The new decree on price regulation in power engineering will be approved via fast-track legislative proceedings. "We see no reason for any increase in electricity prices if the market price of the commodity is decreasing. The drop must be reflected in invoices for 2017," underlined Fico. As Economy Minister Peter Žiga explained, the Office for Regulation of Network Industries' new decree won't deal with fees for circuit breakers, which, in many cases, caused customers' electricity bills to grow considerably year-on-year at the beginning of this year.
A large section of the public and many companies in January received significantly higher electricity and gas bills due to changes in the structure of charges, despite the Government's promises last year that energy charges would go down in 2017. The Regulation Office's head Jozef Holjenčík, who announced his resignation from the post last Thursday, formally resigned at its Regulatory Council meeting on Tuesday, February 7.
