As of this month, the watchdog for energy markets starts his work to protect consumers from structural deficiencies in the energy market early on. Following the principle of "detecting – informing – acting", the current market monitoring conducted by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) and regional consumer advice centers are being expanded.
The most important information in short:
- The vzbv will lead the nationwide development of the new ‘energy watchdog’ structures in cooperation with 14 regional consumer advice centers.
- Energy market developments are observed and evaluated in line with the standards of empirical social research. For this, a systematic nationwide analysis of consumer complaints will be carried out in the segments of electricity and gas, district heating, heating bills and monopolies of metering services.
- First results are scheduled for early 2018.
- The German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) financially supports the project until end of August 2018 with 1.5 Mio. Euro in total.
Ulrich Kelber, Parliamentary State Secretary at the BMJV, said: "The early-warning mechanism which is already working successfully for financial issues as well as the digital world, is now extended to cover energy as well. This way, undesirable developments can be detected, for example based on indications from the public. The information will be provided to all consumers and politicians will be informed at an early stage."
Source: Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv)
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