The new Last Resort Rate for communities of owners with central thermal system:

¿a measure of reinforced protection or the confirmation of a deprotection?

Abstract

Starting from the objective fact, that the generic annual limitation of consumption to access a Last Resort  Rate all domestic consumers and without any initial distinction, is subject to a distorted accounting when projected on those who receive the supply through a central gas installation;  with this work we will delve into the detailed examination of the contracting requirements of that LRT, which Royal Decree-Law 18/2022, of December 18, intends to impose on them in an additional way, with the apparent pretext of making effective their first and temporary authorization of access to a LRT, and as if until now they had been correctly excluded from the LRT and their special and temporary authorization for that purpose was really necessary. Analyzing their respective justification and the possibility of their application, we will verify whether these contracting requirements of the LRT can be used as discriminatory criteria excluding a LRT and as determinants of a more onerous access to it, and this only depending on whether domestic consumers have a collective or individual thermal system. We will conclude by trying to shed light on whether the reinforced protection announced by this Royal Decree-Law is more apparent than real and whether it becomes a claim to consolidate the undue exclusion of access to the LRT of domestic consumers, as an implicit prior presupposition of lack of protection, on which to sustain a regulation of supposed subsequent protection and as a way of continuing to breach the protective requirements of Community law.