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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.

Published: 2 September 2022 15:33 CEST
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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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

Published: 26 June 2024 08:15 CEST
French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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