Judges E Juhász, I Jarukaitis (Rapporteur)
Advocate General N Wahl
The price of electricity sold by a Finnish electricity retail sales company consisted of a fixed monthly tariff for network charges and the price of energy based on electricity consumption. The company granted a €1 discount on network access charges to clients who chose electronic billing, but not for those clients who chose other billing methods. The Finnish Energy Agency considered that the discount amounted to a requirement for clients who had not chosen electronic billing to pay €1 for their bills and it ordered the company to change its billing practices to guarantee the right of its clients to receive their bills free of charge and requested the company to reimburse the part of the fees which had been charged to clients who had not chosen electronic billing. The company brought an action against that decision before the Market Court, Finland, which stayed the proceedings and referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling the question, in essence, whether article 11(1) of Parliament and Council Directive 2012/27/EU, which provided that customers should receive all their bills and billing information for energy consumption free of charge, precluded a discount on electricity network charges granted by an electricity retail sales company exclusively to customers who opted for electronic billing.
On the reference—
Held, article 11(1) of Directive 2012/27 merely laid down the obligation for member states to ensure that electricity retail sales companies ensured that their customers received their bills and billing information relating to energy consumption free of charge and did not impose any additional requirements in relation to that obligation. Therefore, if the bills and billing information were sent free of charge to final customers, that provision did not prevent the customer being granted a discount on network charges. Consequently, the fact that a discount on electricity network charges was granted, pursuant to which the bills and information on billing were sent without charge to the customer, was not incompatible with the objectives of energy efficiency in the Directive. The discount granted to customers who chose electronic billing was intended, inter alia, to reduce the administrative costs of the electricity retail sales company. In order to be able to streamline administrative costs, that company had to have means of encouraging customers to accept changes to their billing habits more easily, which might, where appropriate, lead to the adoption of electronic billing. Interpreting article 11(1) of Directive 2012/27 as prohibiting electricity retail sales companies from granting a discount on network charges to customers who chose electronic billing would deprive such a company of that possibility. Thus, article 11(1) of Directive 2012/27 did not preclude a discount on electricity network charges granted by an electricity retail sales company exclusively to customers who chose electronic billing (judgment, paras 22, 27–29, 32, operative part, para 1).
P Malén for the Energy Agency, Finland.
H Leppo, agent, for the Finnish Government.
G Palmieri, agent, and PG Marrone for the Italian Government.
M Huttunen and K Talabér-Ritz, agents, for the European Commission.