The Romans wondered who guards the guardians. We may have started wondering who regulates the regulators. The question takes on a sharp edge after the hesitant incursions of the energy regulator into the media in response to their probes.

The Malta Resources Authority has had a low-profile life. Until, that is, the government took it upon itself to make Enemalta shift to a tariff-based system to charge for energy consumption. The move was long overdue. Energy is a commodity like any other bar the basic fact that it is supplied under monopolistic conditions in a context of market failures.

These two factors, one is led to presume under a regulators' regime, should be watched over by, well, the regulator. It did not turn out to be the case. The government, with Enemalta fronting, essentially set the tariffs itself. That is how the impression came across, with the tariffs switchover presented to the MCESD by two ministers.

The tariffs were worked out before the regulating MRA had any involvement in them. It was only after hell broke loose that the MRA was brought - note the passive phrase - into the issue. The authority did not take any initiative on its own steam.

It continued to be brought further into the issue when the Prime Minister refused to meet the unions again and, instead, referred them to the MRA. The unions, 11 of them, at least, would not swallow that. Not unreasonably, they pointed out that the MRA - the regulator, that is - had not been involved in the earlier discussions. Neither was it involved in the exercise worked out by the consultancy firm KPMG.

In brief, the MRA was not really up-to-date, much less expert, in the background. Still, the Prime Minister, admittedly a very busy man, adamantly insisted that the 11 unions trash out their difficulties with it. They eventually tried that last week. The outcome was a right royal mess.

Within minutes of the discussion, the unions were saying one conclusion was reached - to backdate any revision of the tariffs; the regulator another - he had never mentioned backdating and doubted that at law he could do so. Asked specifically by this newspaper (January 31) whether the MRA could make the government (for which read Enemalta) refund consumers on old bills if mistakes were found, he replied that "The regulator regulates the future and not the past."

That reply is astonishing for more than one reason. It shows that the Prime Minister was truly taking the mickey out of the 11 unions still at odds with him when he referred them to the regulator for satisfaction.

That pales into insignificance when one digests the regulator's statement further. For, if a regulator does not have powers of redress, what sort of function does he have? Given that the government/Enemalta did not refer the tariffs to the regulator before they imposed them retroactively - that is the "past" - what justification does the regulator have in talking about the future? More pithily, what authority?

We are in an age of decentralisation. The government purports to be shedding functions and supplies hitherto provided by it to private operators. In parallel, it sets up regulators to oversee the new set-ups. If the regulators are as confused as the MRA, or as badly empowered by the legislation that underpins them, there is trouble ahead.

Clearly, regulator legislation needs looking into if it is such that the MRA can seriously say that it only regulates the future.

As for energy prices, rather than loud counter replies and stark posturing, what we require is agreement on a technical formula to establish the cost of producing energy. That cannot be imposed by the government. It has to be agreed with the social partners, preferably through the regulator assisted by transparent expertise.

The formula in place, the effects of pricing energy can be properly divided into economic and social compartments. Rather than getting lost further in diatribes and queer statements, the authorities, the regulator and the social partners had better start working on devising that formula.