Energy costs, Confcommercio: bills are getting heavier and heavier; costs must be reduced as a matter of urgency

Consequently, in Italia, the price of electricity has peaked at 280 euros/MWh (+143 per cent). This situation – explains the confederation – ‘risks further undermining the profit margins of businesses, which are already grappling with an economic climate characterised by weak growth and consumption that remains uncertain’.

Confcommercio is therefore calling for urgent measures to support the competitiveness of businesses in the service sector. The priority is to rapidly reduce the burden of energy bills, ‘by supplementing the measures to support energy investments already provided for in the Budget Bill — such as the extension and reorganisation of tax relief schemes for energy retrofitting and building renovation, as well as support measures for non-energy-intensive micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to encourage investment in renewables and energy efficiency — with measures capable of producing immediate benefits for businesses’.

Specifically, the solution proposed by the confederation is to allocate the additional revenue resulting from the increase in the IRAP rate for companies in the energy sector towards reducing general system charges, ‘continuing the process already initiated by the 2026 Energy Bills Decree to ease energy costs’.

In this context, Confcommercio ‘also welcomes the proposal to introduce, via the forthcoming “Bollette bis” decree, a cap on the price of gas at 58.9 euros/MWh, which could help to curb price rises and reduce bills by up to 10 per cent’. The measure described above would be useful, however, ‘particularly during emergencies’, but cannot be expected to ‘replace structural measures’.

According to the confederation, it is, in fact, urgent to tackle the root causes of the energy cost gap between Italia and the main European countries ‘by intervening in the mechanism that determines electricity prices and reducing its dependence on gas prices’.