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POLITICS

France ‘has secured its energy supplies’ as Russia cuts gas deliveries

France's environment minister on Friday moved to calm fears of energy rationing this winter, saying the country was ahead of target on stockpiling gas supplies, but added that the government's long-awaited 'energy sobriety' plan will not be revealed until October.

France 'has secured its energy supplies' as Russia cuts gas deliveries
Photo by Ina FASSBENDER / AFP

Emmanuel Macron and his ministers on Friday morning held an ‘energy defence council’ to discuss the situation, days after Russia announced that it was stopped gas supplies to France’s main supplier Engie.

After the meeting, Energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said that France’s gas reserves are already 92 percent full, putting them two months ahead of schedule.

“The situation is serious but we have activated all the levers to pass the winter,” she said. 

The Engie CEO Catherine MacGregor told French media on Friday that she was “relatively serene” about the gas situation in France for the coming winter. 

She added that Russia had “not cut supplies, but lowered them” and moved to calm fears about energy rationing this winter.

ANALYSIS: Will there be energy rationing in France this winter?

She did not, however, reveal any details of the government’s sobriété enérgetique (energy sobriety) plan, with which it hopes to cut France’s energy usage by 10 percent in two years, and 30 percent by 2030, other than to say it would be ready by the start of October, after energy network chiefs give their detailed winter forecasts. 

Speaking to businesses at the start of the week, prime minister Elisabeth Borne said that she expected businesses to have completed their own energy-saving plans by the end of September.

Lille’s plan followed in the footsteps of France’s neighbour, Germany, who recently announced it would limit public lighting as well. The government’s energy saving plans would no longer allow for public buildings and monuments to be illuminated for aesthetic purposes, and that “shop window lighting will have to be turned off from 10pm to 6am.”

READ MORE: Germany to order lights off in shop windows at night

The sobriété enérgetique plan is expected to impose rules on public-sector offices and government departments, while encouraging businesses to sign up to by-sector codes for energy use. Energy-saving measures for households – such as lowering the heating or turning down the air-conditioning – are expected to be voluntary.

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POLITICS

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

New Caledonia's main international airport will reopen from Monday after being shut last month during a spate of deadly unrest, the high commission in the French Pacific territory said, adding a curfew would also be reduced.

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

The commission said Sunday that it had “decided to reopen the airport during the day” and to “push back to 8:00 pm (from 6:00 pm) the start of the curfew as of Monday”.

The measures had been introduced after violence broke out on May 13 over a controversial voting reform that would have allowed long-term residents to participate in local polls.

The archipelago’s Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their vote, putting hopes for eventually winning independence definitively out of reach.

READ ALSO: Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Barricades, skirmishes with the police and looting left nine dead and hundreds injured, and inflicted hundreds of millions of euros in damage.

The full resumption of flights at Tontouta airport was made possible by the reopening of an expressway linking it to the capital Noumea that had been blocked by demonstrators, the commission said.

Previously the airport was only handling a small number of flights with special exemptions.

Meanwhile, the curfew, which runs until 6:00 am, was reduced “in light of the improvement in the situation and in order to facilitate the gradual return to normal life”, the commission added.

French President Emmanuel Macron had announced on Wednesday that the voting reform that touched off the unrest would be “suspended” in light of snap parliamentary polls.

Instead he aimed to “give full voice to local dialogue and the restoration of order”, he told reporters.

Although approved by both France’s National Assembly and Senate, the reform had been waiting on a constitutional congress of both houses to become part of the basic law.

Caledonian pro-independence movements had already considered reform dead given Macron’s call for snap elections.

“This should be a time for rebuilding peace and social ties,” the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) said Wednesday before the announcement.

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