#Regulated #tariffs #EDF #attacks #decision #State
An appeal by a state-owned company against a decision made by… the state. The stage is not trivial. It is the confrontation that EDF engages with its main shareholder (84% of the capital). Alors que dernier compte l’obliger, as announced in January and formalized by decree on March 11, to sell the advantage of electricity at the price of its competitors in order to limit the increase in tariffs, the historical fournisseur and compte pas se laisser make. And yes, he is combative in the face of a measure that his general director, Jean-Bernard Lévy, had immediately described as “ real shock in a letter to managers.
And rightly so, it announced this Thursday, May 12, on the occasion of the Group’s General Shareholders’ Meeting, its intention to start a ” equitable relief Against the device, for which the State has two months to respond.
” As indicated in its press release dated January 13, 2022, EDF will take all measures likely to preserve its rights that it deems useful in relation to the aforementioned decree of March 11, 2022, as well as the three decrees that complement the mechanism in question. . In this context, EDF addressed to the State, in terms of deadlines while preserving its rights, an appeal without a doubt requesting the withdrawal of these four acts. In any case, EDF reserves the right to go to the competent administrative courts”, specifies the company.
In fact, this measure, which forces it to increase by 20% the production of 100 terawatt hours (TWh) sold within the framework of the Regulated Access to Historic Nuclear Electricity (ARENH), should “cost” it dearly: 10,000 million euros of deficit during the year, according to my latest EDF estimates presented at the end of April.
And this, despite the fact that the company is facing a corrosion defect identified in several of the fleet’s reactors, forcing it to close some of them and drastically lower its production by 2022, where the company will have to invest tens of thousands of million to expand existing power. plants and prepare for the construction of new EPRs.
Rejection of the request of the unions by the Council of State
After the publication of the decree, the CGT, CFE-CGC, CFDT and FO federations of the energy sector, dthe members of the Board of Directors and the representatives of the shareholder workers they themselves had asked the emergency suspension ofs normative texts that organize what they consider a plunder of EDF “. But last Friday, the courtroom judge of the Council of State had decided to keep the device, stating that ” neither the investigation nor the hearing showed that this measure created an emergency situation for the financial interests of EDF, the employment conditions of its employees or the financial interests of its employee shareholders “.
“The Council of State rejected the request considering that there was no urgency to suspend this decision, but the need to keep it pending a decision on the merits,” the CFE Energies reacted on Monday.
The fact remains that, in his opinion, the Council of State considered that the measure presents a ” public interest “.” In a context of strong price increases, the increase in the volume of Arenh should make it possible to significantly limit the increase in electricity prices “, according to the judge.
A necessary device according to the government
For his part, the executive had accused EDF of loading the ship with its losses, assuring that the sale of the additional 20 TW of ARENH to its competitors would not in itself cost the public company.” only about 3 billion euros “. The other 7,000 million euros that are missing in EDF’s Ebitda should, therefore, be due to the slightest increase in rates derived from the Government’s action.
” Is it a public service, to help the French, or a company whose sole purpose is profit? I choose the first answer “, added on January 25 the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, to the microphone of FranceInfo.
An argument shared by Jean-François Carenco, president of the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE). In fact, the senior official had come to the government’s aid by stating at the end of January that the drop in EDF’s Ebitda was not “ not desirable but essential “, as without state intervention, the regulated rate would have jumped to 44.5% for individuals on February 1, instead of 4%.
“What matters are consumers, industrial and domestic. How can we make fun of consumers? Yes, the Ebitda, the margin, fell 8 or 9 billion. […] Except they’re going to come back a bit lower than they had planned in 2020 for 2022. It’s not true that we’re looting EDF, they’ll just have less to gain. […] Can EDF say: “It could have made 8 billion”, and meanwhile the companies are closing? It’s not possible. EDF is not threatened with closure, ”he burst into the FranceInfo microphone.