The mandatory electricity procurement component (OIK) introduced in Latvia was legal, and the initiative of the organization "Tiesiskums" to return it is unfounded and aimed solely at dubious profit extraction, stated energy expert Juris Ozoliņš in an interview with the LETA agency.
The organization "Tiesiskums" in its initiative to return the allegedly illegally collected OIK refers to a report by the European Commission (EC) from 2017, which allegedly stated that the support for renewable energy from the Latvian state in the form of OIK was illegal because it was not approved by the EC.
Ozoliņš emphasized that "this is an absolute fabrication." He explained that the EC report does not mention that this support was illegal or unlawful. The mentioned report was a response from the EC to Latvia's notification on how it applies the EU support scheme in accordance with the directives. The only remark in the report was that Latvia should have informed earlier about the specific form of support.
In response to the question of whether the organization "Tiesiskums" is right in considering OIK illegal, Ozoliņš stated that it is not.
"The organization 'Tiesiskums' was created by lawyers who are not guided by the logic of economics or politics, nor do they rely on moral standards. In this case, they simply seized on individual words," said the expert, emphasizing that the authors of the initiative are "gathering a crowd under the slogan 'everything that happened in Latvia was illegal, and therefore you can profit from it.'"
He also noted that at the same time, panic and fear are being sown. "I consider this initiative to be a classic scheme for making money," emphasized Ozoliņš.
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