EVIKEN, the Association of Industrial Energy Consumers, has expressed deep concerns felt by the country’s industrial energy consumers, as well as outright opposition, over regulation changes being prepared as part of the target model.

The association, in a letter contributed to a public consultation procedure staged by LAGIE, the Electricity Market Operator, has listed a series of key concerns, underlining that the revisions being planned would continue to nurture market distortions, maintain obstacles disenabling true regional market interconnections, and, ultimately, increase energy costs for consumers, a prospect that threatens to affect the industrial sector’s level of competitiveness.

The target model process aims to harmonize the electricity wholesale market with EU standards.

In the lead-up to the reforms, the industrial sector has anticipated the establishment of a truly competitive energy market, along the lines of other EU member state markets.

In comments to energypress, one industrial sector official noted that the planned reforms would increase energy costs and create a new high-cost market in which competitive industrial production cannot exist, adding that, if implemented, the measures will help establish an oligopoly.

Besides expressing its opposition to the planned reforms in the letter forwarded to LAGIE, the industrial energy consumers association has also informed the European Commission of its concerns.