On 31 December 2021, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 143/2021 for the amendment of Law no. 123/2012 on electricity and natural gas, as well as for the amendment of other regulatory acts (“GEO 143/2021”) was published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 1259 and entered into force on the same date.

As part of the Digital Single Market Strategy established at EU level, in the last days of year 2021, the Romanian Government approved two important pieces of regulatory acts in the consumer protection field, which transpose the corresponding European Directives.

Former Managing Counsel Ioana Katona has been promoted to Partner at Bondoc si Asociatii. She is a lawyer "within the [firm's] Litigation and Arbitration department ... and focuses on administrative and tax law, energy, health, insolvency, and civil law litigation cases, including real estate and corporate disputes."

Until November 2021, crowdfunding activities (investment-based or lending-based) have not benefited from a dedicated regime and may interfere with the EU banking and financial services rules, triggering ultimately significant risks to all parties involved.

Four regulatory acts of interest to both employers and employees, were published in the Official Gazette.

Directly negotiated power purchase agreements with physical delivery (“PPAs”) have been a sensitive topic in Romania since 2012, when they were prohibited under the new energy law no. 123/2012 (the “Energy Law”) and continue to be a hot topic today, even though (long term) PPAs negotiated over the counter are expressly allowed under art. 3 (o) of Regulation (EU) 2019/943 (“Internal Market Regulation”), as they fall under the concept of “long term supply agreements”. This is mainly because Romania has stumbled over the last 2 years in reintroducing the directly negotiated PPAs back into the domestic legislation, in line with EU rules and EU market practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of practical and legislative changes. Still, even if the virus complicated the overall environment (to which other factors contributed, such as elections followed by a change of government), Romania remains a place with significant business opportunities.

The first part of July 2021 marks an important step at the level of the EU in its road towards the European Green Deal objectives. On July 14, 2021, the European Commission (EC) announced the rather complex set of reforms under the Fit for 55 package. Only a week before, the EC issued the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy setting forth the main steps going forward towards placing ESG-disclosures and sustainability matters at the heart of financing system and economy in the EU.

A recent case brought before a court in Amsterdam has given us the opportunity to call into question the right of access to personal data regulated by art. 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and in particular certain aspects related to the difficulties that may be caused to a data controller, in certain situations, by the data subjects’ exercising this right.