The unions have lodged a complaint with the European Commission.
The government published on Saturday the texts increasing the quota of electricity sold at a reduced price by EDF to its competitors within the framework of the “tariff shield”. A decree and two decrees published in the official journal organize the increase until the end of the year by 20%, to 120 terawatt hours, of the Arenh ceiling (regulated access to historical nuclear electricity), a mechanism which forces the energy company to sell its production to its low-cost competitors. This change will cost about 8 billion euros to EDF, whose management was also opposed to this measure.
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Three favorable opinions on these texts from the Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent administrative authority responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of the electricity and gas markets in France, are also published on Saturday in the Official Journal.
In February, the Higher Energy Council (CSE), an advisory body made up of parliamentarians, representatives of consumers, local authorities, companies in the energy sector and employees, had for its part given an unfavorable opinion on the increase in the ‘Arenh. The government announced the establishment of this mechanism in January, to contain electricity bills in a context of sharp price increases, further reinforced since in particular by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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The CGT, CFE-CGC, CFDT and FO federations in the energy sector announced in a joint press release on Friday that they were going to ask the European Commission to open “a formal examination procedure against the French government on the aid scheme illegally implemented and potentially incompatible with the common marketwhat, in their view, constitutes this raising of the Arenh.