Update 21.38: The Ciucă government has officially confirmed that it is analyzing a GEO draft regarding the implementation of EU Regulation 2022/1854, i.e. the European-level regulation that would allow for overtaxing oil companies, according to the executive’s agenda made public by the ‘Press office .
Original article: Ciucă’s government has prepared an emergency ordinance with which it will superimpose the producers of crude oil and gas, as well as the refineries that produce fuels, according to a project presented exclusively by Economica.net and confirmed to G4Media by government sources. Next year, companies will pay a solidarity contribution equal to 60% on the difference between this year’s profit and the average profit for the period 2018-2021 increased by 20%.
The companies most affected by the surcharge are OMV Petrom (majority Austrian capital) and Romgaz (majority state capital), according to Economica.net.
The government has calculated that it will collect one billion euros from this surcharge in 2023, government sources told G4Media.
It should be noted that the money will go to a special account opened in the Ministry of Finance.
The Finance Ministry’s draft comes three weeks after Austria vetoed Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen membership on the grounds that Vienna has a problem with illegal immigration.
The basis for imposing this surcharge is the European Union’s Regulation 1854/2022, which allows member states to further tax energy companies that have made windfall profits, but without imposing a certain threshold.
It should be noted that if this supplement comes into force, the biggest loser will be the Austrian state, which is the majority shareholder of OMV Petrom. The Romanian state will win anyway, because it is the minority shareholder of OMV Petrom and the majority shareholder of Romgaz, and through the excessive tax levy it practically moves the money owed as dividends from one pocket to another.
Another category of losers are Romanian employees (over 6 million) who have pensions administered by pillar 2 and therefore have an exposure of 6.4 billion lei on the shares of OMV Petrom and Romgaz, shares that could be affected by the introduction of this increase. The small shareholders of the two companies will also lose out, given that the profit will no longer be entirely distributed among the shareholders, but will be overloaded.
