Figures out this week by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, has placed Portugal at the summit of where energy prices for households are highest.
According to researchers, Portugal continued to have the highest gas prices in Europe and the second highest electricity prices in 2017 in terms of purchasing power parity.
The EU statistics office further revealed that Portugal was second in the list of electricity prices in purchasing power parity (28.0 PPP per 100 kilowatt hours), immediately after Germany (28.8) and before Belgium (26.4) and Romania (26.0).
One of the major reasons for Portugal being so close to the top when it comes to energy costs, is the fact that taxes here are the third highest anywhere in Europe.
Energy prices are inflated by a further 52 percent due to taxes, which is only behind Germany and Denmark.
The share of taxes and levies in total household electricity prices vary significantly between Member States, being as low as five percent in Malta in the second half of 2017.
On average in the EU, taxes and levies accounted for more than a third (40 percent) of household electricity prices.
When expressed in purchasing power standards (PPS), an artificial common reference currency that eliminates general price level differences between countries, it can be seen that, relative to the cost of other goods and services, the lowest household electricity prices were found in Finland (13.0 PPS per 100 kWh), Luxembourg (13.4) and the Netherlands (14.0), and the highest in Germany (28.8), Portugal (28.0), Belgium (26.4), Romania (26.0) and Poland (25.4).
This news comes as the Left Bloc (BE), the third-largest party in Portugal’s parliament and part of the governing alliance, called for a parliamentary committee of inquiry into “excessive rents” paid by the state to electricity suppliers.
An obvious result of these excessive rents is an increase in taxes in order to subsidise payments to utility companies.
According to Lusa News Agency, the party has called on 43 witnesses to appear before the committee, including four former prime ministers - José Manuel Durão Barroso, Pedro Santana Lopes, José Sócrates and Passos Coelho.
The party said it also wants to hear from José Sócrates’s Economy Minister, Manuel Pinho, and the incumbent, Manuel Caldeira Cabral.
The current Prime Minister, António Costa, is not on the list of those the Left Bloc wants to testify in the hearings.
However, the CEO of the privatised utility Energias de Portugal, António Mexia, and the former chairman of Banco Espírito Santo, Ricardo Salgado, are among those listed as persons of interest.