A Comparative Analysis of the Italian and German Laws Regulating Electricity Bills during Exceptional Events

Abstract

The article focuses its attention on analyzing, firstly, the European regulatory landmark on energy bills. Secondly, this article will investigate the electricity bills discipline of two European countries: Germany and Italy. The scope of the first part of this article is to highlight the differences in the structure and the discipline of electricity bills in the two countries. The second part of the article will investigate how both EU countries have reacted to energy bills during emergency periods. For Italy, the focus will be both on the earthquake of 2016 which destroyed 138 municipalities of the Marche Region and on the COVID-19 pandemic, while for Germany the investigation will concentrate only on the pandemic emergency regulations related to energy bills. The outline of the article will be a comparison of both energy bills practices during emergency periods thus highlighting how the countries have reacted during these exceptional events.

JEL Classification: K11, K32