Who will compensate citizens who pay the current for the north?

The Kosovo Constitutional Court confirmed that decision earlier.

The amount to be repaid, is over 40m euros.

How this decision will be realised the Energy Regulatory Office (ZRRE) has given no concrete answers.

“The ZERE is analyzing the act and will consider all possible legal options available in this case”, she said, adding that her duties would carry out “must be legal mandate “=x3>.

Similarly, companies failed to respond to energy supply, energy inflows, respectively. K ESCO and KEDS.

“For any details regarding this issue, approach the Energy Regulatory Office”, ECCO told Radio Free Europe.

And, according to former ZERE Board member Kemajl Mustafa, responsibility falls just over KESCO and KEDS.

“They, proportionally, should return the means to consumers, who regularly paid the bills spent [in the north]”, Mustafa says.

While, Arben Djukaj, professor at the Faculty of Electric and Computer Engineering at the University of Pristina, estimates the burden is above ZRRE.

What's the problem with the north current?

Residents in northern Kosovo -- mostly Serbs -- have not paid for the spent flow since the war ended in 1999.

The refusal has resulted from civic disobedience, but also the impact of various structures there, operating under Serbia's correction.

By the end of 2017, the current spent in the north has paid citizens of other parts of Kosovo, who have received increased bills.

The ZERE has formalised this through a decision only in 2012, but has not been known to the public, until the issue was raised by the ombudsman in 2017.

From 2017 onward, due to numerous citizens' complaints, responsibility for payment has been handed over to the Kosovo System, Transmission and Market Operator, COSTT. Subventions have also divided the Government of Kosovo.

In 2022, then, Kosovo and Serbia have agreed to implement an energy agreement reached since 2013, within dialogue on normalising relations.

In practice, it is only beginning to apply last month, when citizens in the north received their first bills.

How has the case ended in the Constitutional Court?

In 2017, the ombudsman institution has filed lawsuits in court against the 2012 ZERE decision to pay citizens in other areas north.

At the time, the Constitutional Court in Pristina has demanded that this practice be suspended, viewing it as illegal.

Based on the indictment exercised by the ombudsman, this court, in 2021, has also forced Z. The RRE to impose KEDS on the return of over 40m euros to Kosovo citizens.

The Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court have confirmed the verdict.

But the ZERE has considered it unfair and has been addressed to the Constitutional Court, which on 11 March has made the final decision: payments must be compensated to citizens who have paid off the obligations of the north.

What do experts say?

Former ZERE Board member Kemajl Mustafa says the ZERE along with KESCO should find an adequate form of compensation and set aside a period of time when it will begin.

The way it's easy, KESCO has the exact basis of notes and I know who paid the electricity bills in 2012-2017... They must return. Forty million euros is high. Consumers who have paid for that share may have cheaper bills for a specific period of”, Mustafa tells Radio Free Europe.

Arben Djukaj, professor at the Faculty of Electric and Computer Engineering at the University of Pristina, considers that the main burden for compensation of tools falls on the ZRE, as this mechanism has, according to him, made the wrong decision.

“Knowing that in municipalities in the northern part of Kosovo there are political problems, Z The RRE was not supposed to make that decision. So the burden falls to ZERE, since it could not provide technical conditions and access to consumers in that part of licensed operators, as in the rest of Kosovo”, Djukaj says of Radio Free Europe.

Reactioning a day after the Constitutional Court's ruling, the Council for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms (KMDLNJ) said that “consumers looted by the ZRE, should not accept to be compensated through bills, but should seek to compensate with euros, including regular and punitive interest that determines competent authority, in line with the extent of inflation and the price of electricity”.

KMDLNJ also requested from State Prosecutor <x0 emergency settings” on ZRGE.

With what legal basis since the end of the war, five percent of citizens have been paid electricity bills, damaging 95 percent on ethnic and political grounds”, KMDLNJ said, citing this as a serious “human rights violation”. /Radio Free Europe