site.btaParliament Adopts at First Reading Bill to Provide Compensation over Christmas Power Outages

Parliament on Thursday, voted unanimously, 200-0, to adopt at first reading a bill to provide compensation to household electricity users who were affected by power outages between December 21 and 31.

The deadline for proposals between first and second reading was shortened to three days.

The bill was tabled by MPs Pavela Mitova (There Is Such a People), Delyan Dobrev (GERB-UDF), Dragomir Stoynev (BSP-United Left) and Ramadan Atalay (Democracy, Rights and Freedoms-DRF).

A decree of the Council of Ministers adopted on December 30, 2024 approved additional expenditure of BGN 2.2 million under the budget of the Energy Ministry to be provided to the Electricity System Security Fund so that 26,000 residential customers can receive compensation. This bill provides a legal framework for these payments. 

Customers who have been left without power for more than 24 hours will be entitled to the compensation.

On Wednesday, the bill was approved by the Energy Committee in the National Assembly.

Between December 21 and 24 2024, the average number of affected settlements was 31, and the average number of customers without power supply was 4,658. A significant increase in these indicators was observed from December 25 to 27, with the average number of affected settlements being 280 and affected customers reaching 42 350. As of December 28, 209 settlements and 19,745 customers were without power supply.