Energy compensation to be provided next cold season: Government allocates 550 million lei for 2026

Government will also provide energy compensations this year, but the criteria for selecting beneficiaries will be adjusted so that support is directed to the families that need it most. To provide the compensations, the Cabinet approved an amendment to the state budget and allocated 550 million lei for 2026.

Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said at the Government meeting that the authorities are working on the compensation mechanism, and the new rules to be applied for selecting beneficiaries will be announced soon.

At the same time, the Prime Minister emphasized that the amount of 550 million lei is budgeted for the cold months of 2026, and the authorities are holding discussions with external partners to supplement the available budget.

“An important issue concerns energy compensations. We are working together and will announce the concept as soon as possible. We currently have an amount of 550 million lei reserved. I want to explain this amount so that it is not extrapolated either upwards or downwards. This is the amount budgeted for 2026. For now, we should neither multiply this figure by all the months of the cold season, nor assume that this will be the entire amount of heating compensations. We are now working with external partners to identify additional funds so that we can offer more generous compensations, on the one hand, to those families that need them the most. At the same time, I have said that we must be very responsible with budget money, because we simply cannot afford to borrow in order to spend endlessly,” said Vasile Tofan.

He also stressed that the authorities’ goal is to ensure that support for energy resources is granted to the most vulnerable families.

“In the first year, 2022–2023, practically all families, all households in Moldova benefited from these compensations. Out of 900 thousand applications, we had 895 thousand households covered. In the last season, 2025, about 621 thousand households were covered. Practically 75% of the households in Moldova that applied were covered. Now the challenge for us, as a Government, is to ensure that those who need this aid are covered as generously as possible,” the Prime Minister said.

Vasile Tofan requested a review of the criteria for selecting beneficiaries so that people with high incomes no longer receive heating compensations.

“At the same time, because we have a responsibility for public money, we must ensure that people who are not necessarily the most vulnerable do not receive these funds. Since our criterion is based on income, we verify the income of each household, but we understand that we live in a country where tax evasion still exists. There are people who work off the books, people with two cars and a big house whose official income is still very low, and these people also benefit from compensation. The challenge for us, and the instructions I have given very clearly to Ms. Plugaru’s team, is to work more with indirect income criteria. For example, if a person has an expensive house, if the person has registered cars, if the person has a bank deposit, if the person has paid dividends. Many of these criteria were used in previous years as well, but now we have made them stricter and broader, to ensure that the money goes to those who really need it and that we do not use public money to pay those who are ‘smarter’ than others, reporting low incomes but still benefiting from heating money. We treat this issue with the utmost seriousness,” Vasile Tofan said.

In recent years, the Government has granted citizens energy compensations.