The highest administrative court will decide. The energy unions and salaried directors of EDF have seized the Council of State to contest the decree issued by the government which obliges the EDF group to increase the volumes of electricity sold at low prices to other suppliers of electricity. electricity, they announced on Monday. The date of examination of this request is not yet known.
“On Friday April 1, 2022, the Council of State was seized of an action for annulment and a request for interim suspension against the regulatory texts of March 11, 2022 organizing the spoliation of EDF” through the “raising of the ceiling of the Arenh”, wrote in a press release the four trade union federations representing the electricity and gas industries (CGT, CFE-CGC, FO, CFDT). The appeals are carried out by these four trade union federations but also by the six salaried directors of EDF.
They challenge “the legality and conformity of these measures”
This referral comes after a decision by the government, which asked EDF to increase by 20% the annual quota of electricity sold at a reduced price to its competitors to 120 TWh (compared to 100 TWh previously), to contain the increase in regulated tariffs electricity at 4% in 2022 as promised by the executive.
This system, called Arenh (Regulated access to historic nuclear electricity), was introduced by the European Commission to force the introduction of competition against the national and historic operator EDF, which must thus sell part of its electricity to its competitors at discounted prices (46.2 euros per MWh) while prices on the wholesale markets exceed 200 euros per MWh.
EDF recently bailed out to the tune of 2.7 billion euros by the State
The energy unions and salaried directors of EDF are contesting “the legality and compliance with Community law of these measures, which have serious consequences for EDF, its investment capacities and therefore the public electricity service”, and also ask for the suspension of the texts “and consequently the stopping of the additional delivery of Arenh”.
EDF estimates the negative impact of raising the Arenh to 10.2 billion euros on its gross operating surplus (Ebitda) this year. Confronted in parallel with other production problems in its power plants, the group expects a plunge in its results in 2022. This forced the State to get its hands on the portfolio by subscribing on March 18 to a capital increase of 2.6 billion euros.