Last week, the Minister of the Economy accused TotalEnergies, Engie and EDF of not “playing the game with their customers, especially SMEs”.
The government intends to call energy suppliers to order, meeting in Bercy this Wednesday morning. They are accused of notnot playing the game enough», by inflating the prices offered to SMEs despite an initial agreement in Brussels to reduce bills in the face of galloping inflation. “I think today [les fournisseurs d’énergie] do not sufficiently play the game with their customers, especially SMEs“, said a few days before this meeting the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, directly mentioning TotalEnergies, Engie and EDF.
The purpose of the summons, which will begin at 8:15 a.m., is to guarantee “reasonable pricesthanks to additional commitments from energy suppliers. These latter “must commit alongside the State to help all customers, businesses and local authorities alike, get through this unprecedented crisis“, we say to the office of the Minister of Energy Transition.
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“There are customers who have difficulty finding affordable offers” whereas “a lot of contracts are up for renewalat the end of the year, reacted the general manager of Engie, Catherine MacGregor, confirming the presence of her group at the meeting and ensuring that she was working for “find solutions in a very constructive spirit”. TotalEnergies also confirmed that its teams would travel to Bercy on Wednesday.to meet the government and discuss this subject“. Same for EDF, whose renationalization process was launched on Tuesday evening.
Reasonable prices and conditions
The government wants to createbetter conditions” and “more protectiveby acting at national level, in addition to ongoing negotiations at European level, explained Agnès Pannier-Runacher in Brussels. The energy ministers of the 27 agreed on measures consisting in recovering part of the “superprofits” energy producers to redistribute them to consumers and to reduce the demand for electricity at peak times.
In France, the government will therefore offer companies a “charter“by which they will undertake to “provide all French SMEs with reasonable electricity and energy tariffs, within a reasonable time, with reasonable conditions” and especially “the possibility of revision“, according to Bruno Le Maire. The Minister also insisted on “the possibility for the company to examine the contract” without having “the knife to the throat”. Concretely, the Minister Delegate for SMEs, Olivia Grégoire, intends to ask energy suppliers to give VSEs-SMEs a deadline to pay the bills, as during the health crisis.
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Economic concerns
The rise in prices, caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, slowed in France in September, but remained at the high level of 5.6% over one year. Economists see this moreover as a sham effect, with the planned drop in the rebate on fuel prices. The European employers’ organization BusinessEurope had warned on Thursday that the high prices of gas and electricity in Europe posed a “imminent danger” of “production losses” and “arrests of thousands of European companies”.
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In question: SMEs are offered “prices of around 600 or 700 euros per megawatt hour, where energy suppliers anticipate a price of 200 to 300 euros“, accused Bruno Le Maire on Friday. “It’s not acceptable“, he said. If a new contractshows an incomprehensible increase», “don’t sign!“, hammered Ms. Grégoire to the address of the entrepreneurs. An observation on which the president of the Energy Regulation Commission does not necessarily agree. “If you are around 400 and 500 euros per megawatt hour for a year, that’s roughly the market price and there’s no reason to wait, there you sign“said Emmanuelle Wargon on Monday.
Households and the smallest businesses eligible for regulated tariffs are covered by the “tariff shield», extended until 2023 and limiting the increase in electricity and gas prices to 15%. But larger SMEs are more directly exposed to soaring prices.