The situation is serious. And the executive’s concern is real. With the threat of a total stoppage of Russian gas deliveries, more than half of our nuclear reactors shut down, the risk of power cuts is becoming clearer in the event of a very cold winter.
>> Energy crisis: five questions on the record surge in wholesale electricity prices
Last week, Emmanuel Macron sounded the “end of abundance and end of carelessness“, and Elisabeth Borne drives the point home. The word “rationing” released Monday against the Medef is heavy with meaning. And references. In the collective unconscious, it necessarily refers to the period of war and the Occupation. Closer to home, at the start of the first oil crisis in 1973, the Prime Minister at the time, Pierre Messmer called on the French to “civic discipline” to control their heating and turn off their offices at night. This time, Elisabeth Borne first targets companies: she asks them for savings and the sum to return their copy within a month, at the beginning of October, under penalty of coercive measures.
Emmanuel Macron will even convene a defense council on the subject on Friday. From a pedagogical point of view, it is the ultimate tool. An energy defense council, under the authority of the President and in a select committee, with the head of government, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, and a handful of their colleagues, is one more indication of the solemnity of the moment. A defense council is like a review of the troops, we spread out the staff maps, we take stock of the strategy, the forces present, the flaws in the system. In recent years, successive presidents have used it during terrorist crises, and above all, on a long-term basis, to deal with the Covid pandemic. The defense council is a bit of the last weapon to adhere to the credo set out by Elisabeth Borne: “Savings chosen rather than cuts suffered”…
What if it doesn’t work? Of course, the situation would get complicated. The executive would be forced to pull out the stick, fines, penalties, bans, to force companies, and probably individuals, to tighten their energy belts. A politically perilous spin since the government continues, for the time being, to do its utmost, and that is logical, to limit and even compensate for the soaring energy prices.
However, more often than not, what pushes companies and households most willingly to convert to sobriety is not civility, it is the amount of the bill.