Ribera accuses the power companies of dishonest behavior in the crisis: "They are not playing fair"

MADRID, 16 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has accused the electricity companies of having certain behaviors "not very honest or ethically very correct" in the framework of the energy crisis.

"They are not playing as cleanly as they should in a situation like this. In our invoice there is a lack of clarity regarding the explanations of how they calculate according to what things", Ribera warned in an interview published this Sunday by 'La Razón'.

In this sense, he has assured that there are behaviors of the electric companies that the Government has brought to the attention of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) because it believes that "they must be denounced". Among them, he has lamented that "the commercials of certain companies, when someone calls to ask, say directly that any increase in the bill is the fault of the Government."

Faced with these "lies and falsehoods" that generate "noise" and "doubts" among the population, he hopes that the CNMC will check "if there is any interested interpretation on how to apply the regulations that the Government has approved."

Ribera recalled that the Executive's contingency plan has the objective of "directing savings among all Spanish actors, from large industry and SMEs to citizens and administrations". "We don't want there to be any risk of increasing energy poverty in families and the productive fabric," she said.

In this context, he hopes for "European solutions that allow the price of gas to be drastically reduced", with which the need to support families "will be less because the bills will be more contained and, therefore, the need for support will be less".

Also, it has ruled out that the recommendations of the package of measures become obligations. "It allows us to channel savings, it allows us to call on families and social actors to be responsible in the consumption of their energy, but in no way enter into something that would be very complex to articulate, which is to monitor each citizen, each person. , regarding what their energy consumption is. That would be crazy," he asserted.

Likewise, he added that although "the situation in Europe is complicated, Spain will not have to reach the levels of rationing that the countries of central Europe will most likely have to deal with."

Finally, Ribera has hoped that the energy crisis will not overwhelm the Government because it is "doing more than what has been done in most member states and with greater anticipation". However, he has recognized that "when crises occur and when people have a hard time, they tend to look with special intensity at whoever is in charge of the Government at all times."