1.8 million people, or about 30% of the population of Bulgaria, fall into the group of energy-poor households, which do not have access to basic energy services for adequate heating, cooling, lighting and energy provision for household appliances. Additionally, about 365 000 are vulnerable customers. In Bulgaria, the number of people who were unable to keep their homes warm enough was 20.7%, ranking first in the EU for this indicator. At the European level, a significant increase to 10.6% in 2023 compared to 6.9% in 2021 is reported, the Economic and Social Council said in an opinion on “Measuring energy poverty in Bulgaria and Europe. Policies to tackle energy poverty in Bulgaria in the context of energy market liberalisation for household consumers”.
The rapporteurs are Andon Rokov from Group II and Bogomil Nikolov from Group III.
The government is lagging behind in introducing administrative mechanisms to assess, identify and monitor energy poor households in Bulgaria. ESC highlights the need to develop a comprehensive national strategy to combat energy poverty with clearly defined protection measures as the first and most important step to tackle it. One of the Council’s recommendations is that the social partners and the state should discuss adding an inflation index to the formula for determining the official poverty line in order to overcome the abandonment of the income criterion in determining household status. 
As part of the national strategy to combat energy poverty, a mechanism to determine the level of compensation in a liberalised market for different groups of household consumers should be established. Compensation should be differentiated according to the income and type of beneficiaries and limited to the electricity bills of the household’s main dwelling.
The liberalisation of the electricity market for household consumers will lead to higher prices if Bulgaria’s electricity grid is not connected to the Common Energy Market of Central Europe and the wholesale market pricing is not improved. Under this approach, the price of electricity on the intraday market is the price of the producer with the most expensive electricity.
According to ESC, during the period of postponement, the efforts of the state should be focused on achieving interconnection of the electricity system of Bulgaria and South-Eastern Europe with the electricity systems of Central and Northern Europe, without which we are not part of the common energy market in Europe.
The price differences between South East Europe and Central Europe are constant and stable – for the whole of 2024 the difference with Central Europe is + 30% and in some months exceeds 50%. In July 2024, the average monthly electricity price in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece is more than 110% higher than in Central European countries such as Germany, Austria, Czech Republic. Even more significant are the differences compared to the market integration of the Nordic countries. As a result, Bulgarian business and the Bulgarian state, through the compensation it provides, pay an prohibitively high price for electricity, and this has an extremely adverse impact on economic competitiveness and living standards.
Bulgaria, possibly together with Greece and Romania, should initiate before the European Commission the creation of a European Energy Solidarity Fund to compensate the differences in prices on the exchanges in South-Eastern Europe with those in Central Europe, insist the representatives of business, trade unions and civil society organisations.
The Economic and Social Council is concerned about the continuing imbalance in the European electricity market and the persistence of excessively high prices in south-eastern Europe, as highlighted in an opinion entitled “Price disparities in the electricity markets in Europe – challenges for the Bulgarian industry and ways to overcome them”. Presenters are Rumiana Georgieva from Group I and Plamen Dimitrov from Group II. 
The Council highlights the negative effects of this and links them to a number of risks. These include an increase in inflation and production costs, a deterioration in industrial competitiveness and the business environment for developing supply chains, an increase in the risk of offshoring to other countries within and outside the EU, a negative impact on workers’ incomes, and an increase in households in fuel poverty and vulnerable customers. The problems of excessively high electricity prices require urgent action to restore economic competitiveness in Europe and protect household purchasing power from energy inflation. Particularly affected is the Bulgarian energy-intensive industry, which exports between 70 and 100% of its production mainly to European countries.
Both opinions were adopted in Plenary at ESC. During the session, the Council also voted and unanimously endorsed the Analysis of the Dimensions of Inequality in Bulgarian Society, developed at the proposal of the President of the 51st National Assembly. Assoc. Theodore Dechev from Group I, Atanas Katsarchev from Group II and Lidiya Shuleva from Group III.
