On January 12, 2023 on the website of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) the opinion of the CJEU in Case C-677/21, Fluvius Antwerpen versus MX, ECLI:EU:C:2023:24.

In this request for a preliminary ruling, the Court must consider the consequences of ‘electricity theft’ in terms of value added tax (VAT). This is because the referring court is unsure whether an illegal user of electricity must pay for the electricity consumed plus any VAT incurred or only the so-called net price without VAT. In the present case, the distribution network operator discovered that a person had unlawfully taken electricity at his residential address for his personal use and subsequently charged the ‘electricity thief’ for it.