Macron ousts EDF boss accused of giving French industry ‘the middle finger'

Telegraph

21-03-2025

Emmanuel Macron has ousted the boss of the state-run EDF after French industrialists revolted over its high electricity prices.
Luc Rémont is to be replaced in a surprise reshuffling of the company's top ranks, Mr Macron's office said on Friday. Mr Rémont has run the the state-owned energy giant since November 2022.
The shake-up follows an outcry over the high energy prices EDF is poised to charge factories. Benoît Bazin, the boss of building materials giant Saint-Gobain, had accused EDF of 'giving the middle finger to French industry' by increasing prices.
Rules that force EDF to sell energy to major industrialists at below-market prices are set to expire at the end of the year and the generator had announced plans to raise its prices.
Industry group Uniden, which represents dozens of France's biggest manufacturers including Renault and steelmaker ArcelorMittal, claimed EDF was 'deliberately turning its back' on French businesses at a time when manufacturers were 'exposed to unprecedented non-European competition that threatens the very survival of many sites'.
The row is embarrassing for Mr Macron, who had pledged to 'take back control of electricity prices' and who sees cheap electricity as a way of securing the French economy. Two years ago, he fully nationalised EDF by buying the 16pc of the company the government did not already own.
The shake-up comes days after the Macron administration said it had agreed state financing for six new nuclear reactors to be built by EDF over the coming decades.
Anger over high industrial energy prices is rising in the UK too. UK factories pay 50pc more for electricity than rivals in France and Germany, and four times as much as American plants. High prices have been blamed on net zero and slow-moving plans to expand nuclear power.
Warnings from industrialists that net zero energy policies are damaging the economy have fallen on deaf ears. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, said this week the UK Government was 'absolutely up for the fight' over net zero.
EDF is one of the largest players in the UK nuclear power market, after buying three formerly nationalised regional electricity boards and the nuclear operator British Energy.
It is currently building the UK's first new nuclear power station for over 20 years, Hinkley Point C, and plans to embark on the construction of another, Sizewell C. But in January, the future of this new project was thrown into doubt after the French state auditor warned it against embarking on risky new foreign projects.