Agnès Pannier-Runacher assures that there will be no “double-digit” increase in future electricity prices

In September, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire assured that an increase in regulated prices from 10% to 20% was “excluded” during the next reevaluation in February.

“Coming increases” on electricity bills “are not intended to be double digits. This was assured by the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, in the program “Le Grand jury RTL-M6-THE Figaro“, Sunday December 3. “Today, tomorrow, there will no longer be price surges such as we experienced in 2022, thanks to our action at the European level and thanks to our action at the French level”she argued, referring to two key agreements reached this fall.

On October 17, the Twenty-Seven agreed on a reform of the European electricity market, against a backdrop of tough talks between Paris and Berlin on nuclear power. It must make it possible to limit the volatility of prices on the markets. Furthermore, in France, EDF and the government reached an agreement on November 14 setting the reference price of nuclear electricity sold by the historic operator at 70 euros per MWh from 2026.

The price shield gradually lifted

“Today, we are regaining control over the price of electricity and we are regaining it with increases which are intended to follow (…) our cost of electricity production, the cost of nuclear power, the cost of “our entire network and which is disconnected from the cost of fossils”, underlined the minister. In 2022, in the wake of the war in Ukraine, the surge in gas prices drove electricity prices to new heights.

In September, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire assured that an increase in regulated prices from 10% to 20% was “excluded” during the next reassessment in February. The State still covers 37% of the French electricity bill as part of the tariff shield put in place in the fall of 2021, at the height of the energy crisis. But this protection is set to be gradually reduced “fluent 2024″, while prices on electricity markets “are falling”.