The deviceassistance to help businesses pay their energy bills must be refined in the coming days but the idea was stopped this weekend. The option chosen by the government is to pay part of the companies’ energy bills directly and to offset part of their additional cost of purchasing electricity. Be careful, within a certain limit, however. The rebate should be between 10 and 25% of the companies’ energy bill.
As the negotiations within the European Union on the gas price cap are not progressing, the government wants to move quickly and respond to the employers’ organizations which fear cascading bankruptcies, because of the soaring energy prices. .
The whole point of the system chosen by the executive is that it is much simpler than the existing aid: companies will not have to file files with Bercy. The government will pay the money to suppliers like EDF, Engie, etc. The support will be deducted directly from the companies’ invoices.
A tariff shield as for households will not be put in place because certain companies – those with less than ten employees who make less than three million in turnover – already benefit from it, but above all because a tariff shield on all undertakings would be far too expensive for public finances. At the end of the week, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the Minister for Energy Transition and Bruno Le Maire, the Minister for the Economy received business leaders and the speech was very clear: for households, the tariff shield already costs 100 billion euros over three years. Impossible to do the same for companies. This would not be tenable for the public accounts. Bercy’s anxiety is to fall back into whatever it takes.
This aid to businesses will cost around ten billion euros, according to Bercy. Seven will be financed by the European contribution on energies and three billion will come from the fund. Business leaders are waiting for the details, the reimbursement thresholds, but they say they are relieved. François Asselin, President of the CPME told us on Sunday October 23: “It limits the breakage, at least in the immediate future.”