Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister, has admitted that Polish households will be affected by rising costs of energy but said a part of these costs will be covered by energy companies.
“Households will be affected by some sort of an increase, but a large part of the increase has already been covered by the Polish state, for example through the law on coal subsidies,” Morawiecki said after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
“But energy companies must also cover a part of the raise by reducing their demands for higher tariffs,” the prime minister added.
“They can’t be left untouched amid this crisis,” he said.
The government has recently decided to offer one-off subsidies of PLN 3,000 (EUR 637) for all households which use coal as the main source of heating.
Coal prices on global markets soared when the world’s economies started to emerge from the slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic and spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022. Polish power plants largely rely on coal for power generation and have seen their costs balloon over the past year.