Post by account_disabled on Mar 13, 2024 19:10:07 GMT 10
Understanding that intervention by the Judiciary would bring more harm than good to the solution of the problem, a federal judge in São Paulo denied a request to nullify the CDE (Energy Development Account) charge on the energy bill of a group of shopping malls, which also requested the refund of amounts unduly paid. Judge Tiago Bitencourt de David defended “a broad political-administrative solution to resolve the impasse”.
The CDE was established by Federal Law 10,438/02 due to the energy crisis that led to rationing between 2001 and 2002. In the action, the group of shopping malls B2B Lead claimed that there was "an increase in the purposes for which the amounts were being collected, exceeding the initial motivation and exceeding legal limits". The judge even agreed with the arguments and stated that, in his opinion, "there was inappropriate interference in the formation of the public price and the use of the funds collected suffered illicit disposal."
This is because, in 2014, a presidential decree authorized the use of resources raised with the CDE to pay for electrical works necessary for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Furthermore, the judge criticized the use of the CDE for subsidy purposes. "It can be seen that the CDE was being used for other purposes, not only in disagreement with the possibility granted by the Greater Law, but also by the founding Federal Law itself", he added.
However, these reasons do not require acceptance of the demand, according to David. One of the problems he pointed out would be the difficulty in calculating the exact amounts that were paid in excess by the authors of the action: "The issue is complex, quantifying how much more was effectively charged to each consumer proves to be practically unfeasible and would lead to a a large number of discussions, as well as even the determination to abstain from future charges, proves to be undesirable given the system is already established."
In a case like this, according to the judge, social pacification is not achieved through a sentence, much less through an individual process, "whose design is absolutely inappropriate to resolve a delicate and complex problem like the present one." Therefore, "both the refund and the inhibition of future charges are unnecessary, under penalty of further complicating the way out of the situation in which consumers were unduly placed by the Public Power", concluded the judge.
The CDE was established by Federal Law 10,438/02 due to the energy crisis that led to rationing between 2001 and 2002. In the action, the group of shopping malls B2B Lead claimed that there was "an increase in the purposes for which the amounts were being collected, exceeding the initial motivation and exceeding legal limits". The judge even agreed with the arguments and stated that, in his opinion, "there was inappropriate interference in the formation of the public price and the use of the funds collected suffered illicit disposal."
This is because, in 2014, a presidential decree authorized the use of resources raised with the CDE to pay for electrical works necessary for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Furthermore, the judge criticized the use of the CDE for subsidy purposes. "It can be seen that the CDE was being used for other purposes, not only in disagreement with the possibility granted by the Greater Law, but also by the founding Federal Law itself", he added.
However, these reasons do not require acceptance of the demand, according to David. One of the problems he pointed out would be the difficulty in calculating the exact amounts that were paid in excess by the authors of the action: "The issue is complex, quantifying how much more was effectively charged to each consumer proves to be practically unfeasible and would lead to a a large number of discussions, as well as even the determination to abstain from future charges, proves to be undesirable given the system is already established."
In a case like this, according to the judge, social pacification is not achieved through a sentence, much less through an individual process, "whose design is absolutely inappropriate to resolve a delicate and complex problem like the present one." Therefore, "both the refund and the inhibition of future charges are unnecessary, under penalty of further complicating the way out of the situation in which consumers were unduly placed by the Public Power", concluded the judge.