Brussels, 23/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - Customers who have electricity and gas supply contracts under the standard tariff (customers covered by the universal supply obligation) must be informed with adequate notice of the reasons, conditions and scale of any changes to the tariff in order to put them in a position to terminate the contract and challenge the change, the Court of Justice has ruled in a verdict (joined cases C-359/11 and C-400/11) returned on Thursday 23 October.
In this verdict, European judges take the view that the German rules in force since the period of the events in question (between 2005 and 2008) did not respect EU law, in particular the 'electricity' (2003/542) and 'gas' (2003/553) directives. The German rules allow suppliers unilaterally to change gas and electricity prices without notifying customers of the reasons, conditions or scale of the change. Consequently, customers were informed only of the change in the price and were unable to terminate their contracts.
The Court finds that the two directives oblige the member states to offer consumers a high level of protection. This gives consumers the right, under these two directives, to terminate contracts with their supplier. Although the directives do not go further than that, the judges took the view that this right to cancel the contract should be added to by the right to challenge the tariff change. In order to be in a position to do this, consumers must be given adequate notice of the reasons, conditions and scale of the change before it enters into force. The Court rejected the request of the German suppliers to limit the effects of this verdict in time and not to apply it retrospectively to the period of application of the directives. (JK)