A recent EU regulation adopted into Hungarian law allows companies to charge interest on late payments as well as a minimum fee of €40 as compensation for the cost of invoice payment enforcement.

Elmű violated regulations by failing to enact the rule in its terms of service and inform the energy regulator and clients that it was planning to charge debt collection fees.

It has collected some Ft 600 million this way from 17,000 customers from October 2015 until April 2017.

Last year, Tigáz was fined Ft 100 million for similar offences.

Source: Hungary Around the Clock

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