Your electricity was cut off because you did not pay a “maintenance fee”? What the court says

You bought an apartment in a complex on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. You live there a few weeks a year, and the rest of the time the property stands empty or is let. The complex has one common electricity meter and one common water meter for the whole site — your apartment has no account of its own either with the electricity distribution company or with the water utility. Your bills come not from the electricity supplier but from the management company or from the developer, which has remained the owner of the largest part of the complex (most often the hotel part).

One day you receive an email: you owe a certain sum for “maintenance of the common parts”. You think the amount is unjustified — there is no clear formula for calculating it, nobody agreed it with you beforehand, and you never signed a management contract. You refuse to pay until you get an explanation. The answer comes quickly: the electricity and water to your apartment have been cut off “until the fees due are paid”.

This is not a hypothetical case. It is a situation that really happens in complexes on the southern Black Sea coast — and there is already established court practice on the question.

Why it comes to this

Many holiday complexes on the coast were built and put into operation with a single connected consumer on the electricity distribution network — the developer itself. The apartments inside the complex are sold to separate owners, but technically they never get an individual account of their own. Responsibility for convening a general meeting of the owners and setting up a condominium under the Condominium Management Act lies with the owners themselves — but in practice, when the complex is mainly a holiday one and the owners live abroad, that general meeting is rarely held.

As a result the developer or management company becomes in practice the sole “supplier” of electricity and water to all the apartments — not because it has any legal obligation to be, but because the historical technical layout of the complex provides for nothing else. And this factual dependence is sometimes used as leverage to collect maintenance fees whose amount the owners can neither challenge in advance nor negotiate.

What the law says

An important distinction has to be made here, and the courts already make it: the right to suspend the supply of electricity for non-payment belongs only to a licensed electricity supplier, and only against the end customer under an electricity sales contract — under Article 123 of the Energy Act. A developer or management company that is not a licensed supplier has no legal basis to cut off an owner’s electricity because of an unpaid fee for maintenance of the common parts — that is a contractual dispute about a management service, not a dispute about electricity consumed.

An owner whose right to full use of the property is infringed in this way has a claim under Article 109 of the Property Act — the so-called negatory claim, with which the owner can ask the court to order the wrongdoer to stop any unjustified action that obstructs the exercise of the right of ownership. According to the binding case law of the Supreme Court of Cassation, two conditions must be met for the claim to succeed: (1) the defendant carries out an act or omission affecting the property, and (2) that act is unjustified — that is, there is no legal or contractual basis for it.

What the courts say

This practice is already taking shape in the decisions of the Nesebar District Court, the Pomorie District Court and the Burgas Regional Court. In one of the latest decisions the Burgas Regional Court held that a developer without a licence for electricity supply has no legal basis to suspend the electricity supply to an owner’s apartment, regardless of an existing dispute over whether maintenance fees are due — and ordered the company to stop such actions and restore the electricity supply.

In other words: even where there is a real dispute about the amount or basis of the maintenance fees, the developer cannot take the law into its own hands by depriving the owner of basic utilities. The way is different — through the courts, for the claims themselves, if it believes any are owed to it.

If you are in a similar situation

• Do not silently accept the cut-off of electricity or water — document all communication (emails, messages, dates and times of the cut-off)
• Send a written invitation to settle the dispute voluntarily, clearly stating your disagreement with the sums claimed
• Bear in mind that paying “under protest” just to have the supply restored does not mean acknowledging the debt — but say so expressly when you pay
• Seek legal advice before taking court steps — the facts (whether there is an individual account, the payment history, the nature of the complex) matter for the outcome of the case

Frequently asked questions

Nikolay Hristev, Plovdiv Bar Association