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Tallinna Vesi re-applies for open court proceedings

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Following the closure of court proceedings at the request of the Competition
Authority AS Tallinna Vesi is re-applying for open court proceedings in its
ongoing court dispute with the Competition Authority in order for all materials
related to the dispute to be published. 

After the Tallinn District Court granted Competition Authority’s application to
declare the proceedings in its ongoing dispute with AS Tallinna Vesi closed, AS
Tallinna Vesi has re-applied for open court proceedings. The company is making
this application because it is able to demonstrate, with verifiable evidence,
the reasons why the case should be conducted under open proceedings. 

“Firstly, we see that it is always in the public interest to have an open and
transparent discussion on tariff setting, and especially the calculation of
allowed profits within the tariffs,” Ian Plenderleith, CEO of AS Tallinna Vesi
commented. “We consider the Competition Authority’s position to close the
proceedings the absolute opposite of the conduct expected from an economic
regulator whose role is to protect the public interest.” 

According to Plenderleith, AS Tallinna Vesi’s approach to transparent
regulation is fully supported by the Council of European Energy Regulators
(CEER) itself, of which the Competition Authority is a member, which lists its
core principles as the principles of openness and transparency, consistency and
accountability. 

“Furthermore, it is evident that the Competition Authority has misrepresented
the facts in its court application dated 27 April 2012,” Plenderleith added. He
refers to the Competition Authority’s May 6th 2012 announcement, where the
authority claimed that it “will be using in this court proceeding evidence that
include the business secrets of the undertakings of other European countries as
well as regulatory materials that have been declared confidential by other
European regulators and that are meant only for intra-authority usage. Due to
this, we applied for a closed proceeding which was approved by the court.”
According to Plenderleith this is clearly not the case as at least half of this
information is easily available from official public information of the same
European regulators themselves. 

In addition, according to AS Tallinna Vesi’s CEO, none of the WACC parameters
that the Competition Authority based their application on are in fact business
specific, therefore cannot contain business secrets that would otherwise be
compromised in open court proceedings. “The regulatory parameters described by
the Competition Authority as containing “business secrets” of companies are not
business secrets. In fact they are market based estimates used by the
Competition Authority in its calculation of allowed revenues and tariffs, none
of these parameters contain any company specific costs, information or
“secrets”. The Competition Authority should understand this basic regulatory
fact. ” Plenderleith reiterated. 

AS Tallinna Vesi has submitted to the Tallinn Administrative Court two
complaints against the Competition Authority, contesting the Competition
Authority’s May 2nd 2011 decision not to approve the Company’s 2011 tariff
application as well as the Competition Authority’s 10th of October 2011
injunction that obliged AS Tallinna Vesi to decrease its valid tariffs by 1/3.
On the 6th of February 2012, the Tallinn Administrative Court decided to join
the before mentioned cases into one proceeding. The taking place or the date of
the court hearing has yet not been decided. 


         Mariliis Mia Topp
         Head of Communications
         AS Tallinna Vesi
         62 62 275
         [email protected]