Czech Constitutional Court backs state over solar clampdown

Czech Position
The Czech Constitutional Court has ruled that the government was fully within its rights to slap a retroactive tax on solar power plant investors to curb a solar boom in the country. (...) The main feature of the retrospective government step to put a brake on the costly solar boom was a 26 percent tax on profits from solar plants which were connected to the overall power network in 2009 and 2010. (...) It added that the effects of the government’s blanked action could nonetheless have had a serious impact on some solar investors, such as small producers who had taken out high interest bank loans on the basis of a planned fast return on the investment. The boom was party sparked by a sharp fall in the price of solar panels while long-term guaranteed Czech prices for solar-produced power remained at previous high levels. This produced a stampede to set up solar power plants in the country before the government belatedly began to count the cost of the investment fever on electricity users and the government as it tried to cushion the effects on consumers.