Will they play the game? At a time when companies, individuals and communities are seeing electricity prices explode, energy suppliers (Engie, EDF, TotalEnergies and several federations of companies in the sector) were summoned on Wednesday 5 October by the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, and Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, to sign a charter of commitment to good practices, which aims in particular to strengthen consumer confidence in them .
“We cannot accept that suppliers present invoices with prices higher than 1,000 euros per megawatt hour, revise the conditions of contracts unilaterally, do not provide sufficient visibility to our SMEs when renewing or requesting contractindicated Bruno Le Maire, during a press conference. These behaviors, even isolated ones, must stop. They will be sanctioned if necessary, on the basis of investigations that we will request from the DGCCRF [direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes] and the CRE [Commission de régulation de l’énergie]. »
The suppliers present therefore agreed to sign a charter, which includes three main commitments. First, it is a question of warning customers two months before the renewal of their contract, in particular for professional contracts expiring before January 31, 2023. The objective is to prevent SMEs from finding themselves with their backs to the wall, without a contract or forced to sign a contract under unacceptable conditions. Energy companies also undertake to offer at least one offer to their customers, so that no company is left without an energy solution.
Support for the most vulnerable
Finally, they must submit an offer at a date and time agreed in advance. The goal is for companies to be able to compare prices within a given time frame and compete. Important point, these actors, through this charter, will be supposed to impose support for their most vulnerable professional clients. As such, they will need “regularly participate in a working meeting with the competent State entities and the business mediator, to review the difficulties encountered in the implementation of this charter vis-à-vis their professional clients”.
These commitments run until April 30, 2024. With regard to business aid, Bruno Le Maire recalled that 1.5 million VSEs are already eligible for the tariff shield. And that for other companies, the State had set up assistance for the payment of electricity and gas bills, with a budget of 3 billion euros. The latter is intended for companies that are highly dependent on energy, which are exposed to international competition and which cannot raise their prices to amortize their costs.
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