tag: state aid

While market players are finding it increasingly difficult to acquire energy in the quantities needed for their operations, and with skyrocketing energy prices only making matters worse, the government incentive schemes that are available no longer provide a financially viable alternative for power plant developers. The solution may lie in selling electricity on the open market – though key to this will be deciding on a legal framework that’s acceptable to all parties involved, including the lending banks.

The “anti-offshore” law relating to the use of public funds, introduced in 2011, aimed to prevent off-shore companies with unidentifiable ownership structure from acquiring grants out of domestic and EU public funds. The original intention of the legislation seriously distorted, however. Numerous innocent foreign-owned firms, including Hungarian subsidiaries of US-based multinational firms got trapped by the rules.