Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire formally asks energy suppliers to make additional efforts to guarantee “reasonable prices” for SMEs, accusing them of not “playing the game” enough. “I think that today (energy suppliers) do not sufficiently play the game with their customers, especially SMEs,” he said last Friday on Europe 1, directly quoting TotalEnergies, Engie and EDF.
This Wednesday, Bruno Le Maire and Agnès Pannier-Runacher therefore brought them together in Bercy to ask them to sign “a code of conduct”. The companies will undertake to “provide all French SMEs with reasonable electricity and energy prices, within a reasonable time, with reasonable conditions” with in particular “the possibility of revision” if the prices drop, according to Mr. . The mayor. He also insisted on “the possibility for the company to examine the contract without them having the knife under the throat”.
“Production Losses”
The European employers’ organization BusinessEurope had warned on Thursday that the high prices of gas and electricity in Europe posed an “imminent risk” of “production losses” and “shutdowns of thousands of European companies”.
Some energy suppliers offer SMEs “prices of the order of 600 or 700 euros per megawatt hour, where energy suppliers anticipate a price of 200 to 300 euros”, accused Mr. Le Maire. “This is not acceptable,” he castigated.