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As of January 1, 2021, the concession will become automatic and it will no longer be necessary to submit the application: this is what will change in the coming months
by Celestina Dominelli
As of January 1, 2021, the grant will become automatic and it will no longer be necessary to apply: this is what will change in the coming months
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As of January 1, 2021, the social bonus, the discount on the electricity, gas and water bill, which is provided to families in conditions of economic and physical difficulty and to large families, will become automatic. This is the main novelty regarding the energy consumption subsidy that was also mentioned on Thursday, September 17 by Stefano Besseghini, President of the Energy, Networks and Environment Authority (Arera), on the occasion of the presentation to the Government and Parliament of the usual Annual report of the Authority on the status of services and the activity carried out.
As of January 1, 2021, the automatic application of the bonus is activated.
The change of pace, introduced with the last fiscal decree, will therefore allow theautomatic application of the social bonus to potential beneficiaries (around 2.6 million families in a situation of economic difficulty) who will not have to submit a benefit application based on the number of the family and a variable amount depending on the type. To allow the allocation of the bonus, it will be necessary to verify, as it happens today, the condition of economic vulnerability of the family unit measured by the equivalent economic situation indicator (I see) that must be within a certain level (8,265 euros for the three bonuses or € 20,000 for families with more than 4 dependent children). Alternatively, the potential beneficiary should be the owner of income or citizenship pension or, in reference to the electricity voucher, a shopping card.
Only a third of those enabled have access to the discount on the invoice
But, how many are the users of the social bonus currently? According to the last photograph contained in the Authority’s Annual Report, the relationship between the families potentially benefiting from subsidies for being in conditions of economic vulnerability and those actually subsidized has, in general, between 31% and 36% for energy subsidies, with a similar ratio also for the water subsidy (effective from January 1, 2018).
The 2019 Photo on Facilitation
In detail, in 2019 they disbursed 1,428,791 bonus In the energy sectors: 870,277 families had access to the electricity social bonus (829,209 due to economic difficulties and 41,068 due to physical difficulties) and 558,514 families had access to gas. The families that applied for and obtained the social bonus for water were 447,213. The total amount of bonuses paid by the electricity sector (due to economic and physical difficulties) and by the gas sector was approximately 135.5 and 76.2 million euros respectively. Bonuses were paid to the water sector for a total of 13.7 million.
How automatic recognition will work
The goal, therefore, is to automatically bridge the gap between potential and actual recipients. The new automatic recognition system, which will start as mentioned from January 1, 2021, will be based on the information exchange contained in the INPS databases and in the Integrated Information System (SII, the database of personal data and energy customer consumption created and managed by the Sole Purchaser). It will be up to the Energy Authority to define the implementation framework and, after consulting the Privacy Guarantor, the methods for exchanging information regarding the holders of the discounts between the SGA and SGAte (System for the management of subsidies for energy rates). to ensure full recognition of the discount on the invoice.
