The 100% nationalization of EDF will make it possible to act more quickly in the face of an energy crisis which will be a “considerable problem” in the months to come, the cut off of Russian gas supplies being “the most probable option”, said Sunday the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire. The Russian president said Thursday that Russia had “not yet started serious things in Ukraine”, after four and a half months of war. In this context, “let’s prepare for the total cut off of Russian gas, today is the most likely option”, insisted the former UMP then LR deputy, for whom the energy crisis is “the subject the most important of the coming months »
The planned increase from 84% to 100% in the capital of the electrician “changes a lot of things because there are many projects which can sometimes take a few weeks or a few months longer, because there are debates which are legitimate from the moment there is a share of shareholders who are not state shareholders,” the minister explained to journalists at the Economic Meetings of Aix-en-Provence. “There you will have total unity of command,” he continued. “This allows us to take faster decisions on the strategic subject of carbon-free electricity production in France,” he added.
Deindustrialization, a “political scandal”
“We are facing an energy crisis which can have an absolutely major impact on our daily lives, on employment, on the functioning of our companies, on the French industrial tool”, underlined Bruno Le Maire. “It supposes that we accelerate our energy independence,” he added, calling the deindustrialization of France in recent decades a “political scandal”.
In the shorter term, the government is preparing for next winter a series of measures to prioritize households and certain industries in the event of insufficient electricity production. “We have to put ourselves in battle order now on the organization, the shedding, the sobriety, the reduction of consumption… It is now that we must take the decisions”, detailed the Minister of the Economy, not without adding that the subject fell to the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
This year, EDF was forced to unexpectedly shut down 12 reactors, out of the 56 in the French fleet, for corrosion problems. Bruno Le Maire finally clarified that he had not yet obtained the approval of the European Commission for the nationalization of EDF. “I had long discussions with (Competition Commissioner) Margrethe Vestager on this subject, so we will resume our very long discussions,” the minister reported.