July 2022

Decision of the Single Judge of the Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki Rejecting the Application for Prohibition of Disconnection of Electricity Supply to an Enterprise

The decision No 8930/2022 of the Single Judge Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki has been published, which rejected an application for injunctive relief filed by our client's opponent, an electricity supply company. In the application at issue, the opposing company, relying on the invalidity of the revaluation clause in an electricity supply contract, sought a temporary prohibition on the interruption of electricity supply. However, the contract between the parties contained an extrapolation clause giving the Athens courts exclusive jurisdiction. Moreover, paragraph 4 of Article 683 of the Code of Civil Procedure establishes the jurisdiction of the court having jurisdiction in the place nearest to the place of enforcement of the provisional measure, in order to ensure that the application is dealt with more quickly and in less time. The place of enforcement shall be deemed to be the place of enforcement of the provisional measure. Therefore, in the present case, the Supplier was entitled to initiate proceedings with the competent Administrator for the termination of the representation of the meter of the opposing party, if the latter had an overdue balance, by filing a declaration of termination of representation of load. The competent authority for the cessation of the representation was the Operator of the Greek Electricity Distribution Network (DEDDIE). Consequently, the request for the interruption of the electricity supply (the failure to submit which the opposing party sought in this case) was submitted, as is clear from Article 5(5)(a) of the Greek Electricity Distribution Network (DEDDIE). 15 and 16 of the Metering and Periodic Representation Manual, the request for interruption of the electricity supply is submitted by the Supplier to the TSO, which then takes the appropriate action to interrupt the electricity supply. In this regard, since the request of the opposing party in the present application for interim measures was "to prohibit the defendant from interrupting the electricity supply to our building", the place of execution of the requested measure would be the place where the Supplier would carry out the relevant interruption, i.e. where it would give the order to interrupt the electricity supply to the Network Operator (DEDDEO). Therefore, even in the case of application of Article 683 par. 4 of the CPC, the competent courts would be those of Athens. Indeed, under the new Code of Civil Procedure, the court rejected the application without having the possibility to simply refer the discussion of the application to the competent court.