INTEGRITES helped Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine LLC to protect the right to change the electricity supplier

Domestic Litigation team at INTEGRITES helped to protect the rights of Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine LLC in an appeal proceeding related to the dispute with its former energy supplier. The opponent filed a claim against one of the Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine chain stores demanding for the store to be fined for changing the electricity supplier.

The dispute matters both to the firm’s client and other electric power consumers. On one hand, the Law of Ukraine on the Electricity Market and the Directive 2009/72/EC on the common rules for the internal market in electricity are in effect in Ukraine. They provide consumers with an opportunity to voluntarily choose and change the electric power supplier. At the same time, controversial norms in by-laws make possible attempts of many suppliers to collect fines from their former customers.

For INTEGRITES, this is the second case regarding the protection of the client’s right to change the electric power supplier at its own discretion. Another proceeding where courts of the first and second instances had taken the side of the energy supplier, was considered by the Supreme Court of Ukraine that remanded the case for reconsideration.

“In both cases, the goal of INTEGRITES and our clients is to develop the relevant court practice in a way that will make it impossible to punish those consumers who used their right to change the energy supplier,” Oleksandr Onishchenko, partner and head of Domestic Litigation at INTEGRITES, comments.

INTEGRITES team providing legal advice to Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine LLC also included senior associates Serhii Rymar and Anton Kaganets.

*Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine is the Ukrainian representative office of one of the international leaders in wholesale grocery retail, METRO Group (Germany). Operating in Ukraine since 2003, the network is represented by 26 shopping centres across the country