In the case of the tender contest to purchase electric power, the European officials were turned into peaceful observers of repeated manifestations of non-transparency on the part of the government, politologist and energy policy researcher Dionis Cenusa says in an opinion article for IPN.

According to the author, besides promoting the state-run Energocom, the authorities, by their actions, discouraged competition and intimidated the potential participants in the tender contest from Ukraine and the local energy market operators.

Dionis Cenusa noted the authorities’ incoherence in relation to the rules of the game is rather a general problem than an accidental one. The European partners are trying, but seldom manage to change the status-quo. This situation is not typical of the energy sector only and can be met in almost any sphere.

The rules of the game should be common for everyone, including for state-run companies, such as Energocom. Regardless of everything, the power supplies should be based on the principles of transparent and competitive bidding, diversification of the sources of supply and financial integrity of suppliers, which must repay the debts for the hydrocarbons used to generate electricity, said the author.

Dionis Cenusa also said that the transparent purchases of electrical energy from Ukraine, the payment of debts for the natural gas consumed by MoldGRES and its deeper integration into the Moldovan legal space as well as the further interconnection with Romania remain key priorities for the electric power sector.