The Owners of an Apartment in a Building in Co-Ownership Are Required To Contribute to the Costs of the Consumption of Thermal Energy by the Common Parts and the Internal Installation of the Building

By Judgement of 5 December 2019 on joined cases C‑708/17 and C‑725/17 the Court of Justice of the European Union /CJEU/ ruled that Article 27 of Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on consumer rights, amending Council Directive 93/13/EEC and Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Council Directive 85/577/EEC and Directive 97/7/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council read in conjunction with Article 5(1) and (5) of Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’), must be interpreted as not precluding a national law that provides that the owners of an apartment in a building in co-ownership connected to a district heating network are required to contribute to the costs of the consumption of thermal energy by the common parts and the internal installation of the building, even though they did not individually request the supply of that thermal energy and they do not use it in their apartment.

In the same judgement, however, the CJEU also emphasizes that Article 13(2) of Directive 2006/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2006 on energy end-use efficiency and energy services and repealing Council Directive 93/76/EEC and Article 10(1) of Directive 2012/27/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012 on energy efficiency, amending Directives 2009/125/EC and 2010/30/EU and repealing Directives 2004/8/EC and 2006/32/EC must be interpreted as not precluding a national law that provides that in a building held in co-ownership the bills for thermal energy consumption by the internal installation are calculated for each property owner in the building in proportion to the heated volume of his or her apartment. Only if this condition is met the owner’s consumer rights would be protected to the maximum extent.

In the reasons for the aforementioned judgement, the CJEU notes that, as regards more specifically the internal installation, it follows from that information that it may prove difficult, or even impossible, to determine precisely the quantity of heat emitted by that installation in each apartment. That quantity comprises not only the heat emitted inside the apartment concerned by the material elements of the internal installation, such as the ducts and the pipes which pass through that apartment, but also the thermal exchanges between the heated parts and non-heated parts of the building. In this sense the separated apartments in a building in co-ownership are not thermally independent of each other since heat circulates between the units that are heated and those that are less or are not heated.