Les entreprises souhaitant bénéficier de ce "tarif réglementé" pourront en faire la demande jusqu'au 30 juin 2007. Ce tarif spécifique sera établi par le ministère de l'Industrie et ne pourra être supérieur de 30% au tarif réglementé actuel. La compensation pour les fournisseurs sera financée par les gros producteurs d'électricité français, en l'occurrence EDF et Suez.

Companies can make the request to benefit from that new tariff until 30 June 2007. The tariff will be set by the Industry Ministry and can be no higher then 130% of the current regulated tariff. The price difference will be borne by large electricity producers, i.e. EDF and Suez.

The article notes that this should cost EDF about 400 million euros.

It's not in this article, but I've seen them use elsewhere the argument that since EDF has cheap electricity thanks to its nuclear power plants, French companies should not be penalised by the higher market prices for electricity, and for "competitivity reasons", should benefit from EDF's low production costs. There has been a lot a whining, and campaigning by the corporate world to get back to the regulated tariff.

Of course, this ignores many things:

• the basic point that they knew when they switched to market prices 2 years ago that it was an irreversible choice (they were allowed to remain with EDF's regulated tariff, but if they chose to switch, naturally, they could not come back);

• the market price for electricity is not the average cost of production, or the cost of production of the main producer, it is the marginal price of the last kWh needed to balance the market, i.e. the most expensive. Most of the time, it is the price of a gas-fired plant. When power plants were plentiful, and gas was cheap, that price was very low, and indeed lower than EDF's regulated tariff. Now that gas has gone up, and that spare capacity is not so plentiful, that marginal cost has increased massively. It does not matter that EDF's cost base has not budged. Market prices has gone through the roof, and the difference belongs to EDF, and its shareholders, which now include others beyond the French State, as per the desires of market advocates. What the SMEs are doing is State-assisted theft of others' property.

• I have no words for the blantant hypocrisy of these people. All they want are lower prices. There's no ideology, no long term thought, no consistency, no honor, just a "me, me, me , now, now , now" philosophy.

• I have even less respect for the politicians that pander to these people instead of telling them clearly to go fuck off as they deserve. How can they even consider these requests seriously for a second, let alone grant them?

  (Insert more expletives here. I'm foaming at the mouth already).

  Thus we end up with the worst of all worlds. Liberalsied electricity markets, with less public intervention that I think desirable, and yet subsidised prices for corporations. Un-fuckin-believable. (And yet all too believable)