The initiative comes from the Union of Independent Artisan Bakers, a recently created collective of nine bakers across France. MYCHELE DANIAU / AFP
Their lawyer filed an interim release with the aim of extending the benefit of the “tariff shield” to all artisan bakers.
A group of bakers gathered to protest against the explosion in electricity prices has seized the Council of State for the tariff shield, which limits the increase to 15% for some, to be extended to all bakers, said Wednesday their attorney in a statement. Bakers, whose activity is energy-intensive, are particularly mobilized and some had already demonstrated at the end of January to ask for more aid from the government, after weeks of meetings and arrests.
This initiative comes from the Union of Independent Artisan Bakers, recently created by nine bakers across France to “alert the public authorities and obtain concrete help from the governmentin order to cope with the rise in prices, which were multiplied by “4 to 10“. “Since 2020, artisan bakers have had to deal in quick succession with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to a spectacular drop in their turnover due to confinement, a rise in the price of raw materials (in particular butter and wheat) and a spike in the price of energy“, they explain in the text.
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Competition from retail
According to them, the measures put in place by the government are not enough and create “a distortion of competition between artisan bakers consuming less than 36 kVA, who can benefit from the tariff shield capping the increase for 2023 at 15%, and artisan bakers with a power greater than 36 kVA who are excluded from it“. For the latter, the government has announced a “electricity damperwhich benefits SMEs and a price cap of 280 euros per megawatt hour for energy-intensive VSEs.
According to the executive’s estimates, the shock absorber should relieve contractors of 15 to 20% of their electricity bill, which the state pays for. But for the collective of bakers, its implementation is “so complex that even electricity providers don’t know how to use it“and the beneficiaries must still advance the costs”without being certain of one day receiving the promised aid“. They thus fear temporary closures, layoffs and consequently less coverage of certain territories, in the face of competition from large retailers. Their lawyer, Christophe Lèguevaques, indicates that he has filed an interim release with the aim of extending to all artisan bakers the benefit of the “tariff shield“.
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