German Federal Supreme Court: EWE was entitled to make price adjustments in the past

Oldenburg/Karlsruhe, Germany, 14 July 2010. The German Federal Supreme Court today reached a decision on a class action and two individual lawsuits brought by EWE customers concerning gas price adjustments. The action centred on the legality of price adjustments in the disputed years 2004 to 2007. The ruling primarily affects the company's private customers.

Germany's supreme civil court ruled that the Oldenburg-based energy supplier EWE had been entitled to fundamentally adjust its natural gas prices in the past. "This endorses a significant aspect of our opinion. The Supreme Court's verdict means we now have a greater degree of legal certainty," said EWE's Head of Sales, Christian Haferkamp.

The judges upheld the clause which had been used for many years up to the end of March 2007. However, they declared the clause in use since April 2007 invalid.

"First of all, we need to examine exactly what that means for our customers and for us. The ruling has given us some initial pointers on the form of our General Terms and Conditions. We will of course now put these into practice. However, EWE has not been instructed to reimburse its customers," Haferkamp emphasised. The clause was changed in 2007 due to new legal requirements which meant that EWE had to add a new clause to its General Terms and Conditions.

To date, the German Federal Supreme Court has deemed all the price adjustment clauses presented to it as used by other natural gas suppliers to be invalid.

The background to the Supreme Court's decision is a ruling against EWE by the Supreme District Court of Oldenburg in a class action on 5.9.2008. However, today's ruling quashes the Oldenburg court's decision. Earlier, on 22.11.2007 Oldenburg's district court had also ruled in favour of EWE. Two individual lawsuits stem from rulings by the Oldenburg district court on 29.11.2007 which went in favour of EWE.