Very small businesses (TPE) with fewer than 10 employees will benefit from a guaranteed electricity rate, set at €280 per megawatt hour on average over the year 2023, the government announced on Friday January 6 after meeting with suppliers.
This guaranteed rate, applicable from the January 2023 invoice, will be accessible to VSEs which have renewed their electricity supply contract from the second half of 2022 and which do not benefit from the regulated sales rate, specified the Minister of economy, Bruno Le Maire.
Of the 2.1 million VSEs in France, 600,000 do not benefit from the regulated tariff like households, and which is even lower, according to figures given by the number two of the government.
A form to fill out
To benefit from the guaranteed rate, entrepreneurs must retrieve a form from the tax website or that of their electricity supplier, and tick two boxes indicating on the one hand that they are in fact running a very small business (less than 10 employees and less than two million euros in turnover) and on the other hand that they wish to benefit from this aid open until December 31, 2023.
At this stage, the extent of the commercial gesture granted by the suppliers or the effort of the State to compensate for this guaranteed price remains impossible to quantify. “We are continuing discussions on cost sharing” with suppliers, assured Bruno Le Maire.
The gas excluded from the device
With this measure, the government therefore rules out the hypothesis of thousands of individual renegotiations of electricity contracts between companies and suppliers, which has been considered so far. The guaranteed tariff announced on Friday only concerns electricity supply contracts, those of gas being targeted by already existing aid mechanisms (regulated tariff, aid desk, etc.).
Among the energy companies present at the meeting were notably EDF, Engie and TotalEnergies. The latter had announced earlier in the day that he was ready to “tariff revisions” and proposed to bring electricity supply contracts back to VSEs “at an average annual price of €320 excluding tax per MWh, after taking into account” existing government aid.