On September 16, 2022, the government announced the granting of assistance for households in the area of energy. In concrete terms, the aid consists of “energy packages” amounting to €135 per month for gas, and €61 per month for electricity. These flat rates were then deducted from the invoices for November and December, as soon as the measure came into force on November 3, 2022, the day of its publication in the Belgian monitor. These amounts were paid in one installment on your December bills, ie €270 for gas, and €122 for electricity. If you have not received these amounts, you must check that you are included in the grant conditions:
“Any person who has concluded a residential-type energy contract for his home
- variable or
- a new fixed contract concluded or renewed after September 30, 2021″
If this is the case, you can submit a request via a form on the FPS Economy website from January 23, 2023, in order to claim this package not received.
Measure extended until March 2023
During the budget conclave in October, these energy packages, also called “basic package” were extended until March 2023 to continue to support households with energy bills this winter. In theory, the amounts are deducted from the installment invoices for the months concerned. However, several people complain that they did not receive these bonuses with their January 2023 bill, in particular via the orange Alert Us button. “What’s going on with state assistance for our energy bills?“, wonders for example Ludovic. “At Engie, I have no aid calculated for January.“
The installments therefore remain the same as before the granting of the first aid, which can weigh heavily on the portfolio of many households who have seen their installments double, triple, or worse.
According to the energy supplier Engie, there is a lack of data necessary for the deduction of this aid on the installment invoices. “We first need to exchange this data with the FPS Economy, which is planned for mid-February“, explains the supplier’s spokesperson. This data is in fact the list of households that are entitled to this aid, as well as their contact details. This list is updated regularly by the FPS, for example, households must be removed. who already benefit from the social energy tariff, since they are not eligible for the basic package.
New publication in the Belgian Monitor
We then contact the FPS Economy to better understand this slowness. As for the second aid package, for the months of January, February and March, one essential step is above all missing: publication in the Belgian monitor. Indeed, the measure is recorded by the government, but the text is not yet published. “It’s normally a matter of days“, specifies the SPF. “We must first wait for the text to be published, even if the principle is accepted. It is therefore not unusual not to have received this aid on your January invoice. It is still too early.”
Thus, no household has yet benefited from this second burst of the basic package. It could, for example, be a single payment in March, with the aid for the first 3 months of the year combined. This is precisely what was chosen for the first aid package, paid in one go in December.
The payment of this second aid package will therefore not happen immediately. After the publication in the Belgian monitor, the exchange of data between the FPS Economy and the suppliers, there is another step: the CREG (Commission de Régulation de l’Électricité et du Gaz) must first pay the budget granted for these aid to suppliers. Indeed, the energy suppliers will not pay these sums to their customers via their own funds, but via this budget given by the State. The procedure is therefore likely to be long in any case. That said, according to Engie, suppliers have a maximum until April 1 to make payment for this federal aid.