The government will finally present on Thursday afternoon, and not Friday, the new aid to help companies pay their electricity bills, said Thursday morning the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire.
Invited to BFM Business, the N.2 of the government confirmed that the executive was preparing “a specific device to amortize the electricity bill” of companies, especially that of small and medium.
This “electricity guarantee” should result in the State taking over part of the electricity bill of certain companies.
With the Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, “we will specify all these elements really in detail this afternoon,” said Bruno Le Maire, who must still conduct final consultations with professional federations in the morning.
The announcements will be made at 3:00 p.m. at Matignon by the Prime Minister, surrounded for the occasion by Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu and the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
The timetable for the announcement of these aids has thus been brought forward by one day by the executive. In an interview on France 2, President Emmanuel Macron had indicated on Wednesday that these aids, which are eagerly awaited by companies, would be unveiled on Friday.
In addition to the “electricity guarantee”, which is primarily intended for SMEs, the government is working with the European Commission to simplify an existing aid scheme so that medium-sized and large companies can also benefit.
In its current format, this window system allows companies whose energy bill represented at least 3% of turnover in 2021 to apply for aid of up to 2, 25 or 50 million euros.
Even if he is still waiting for “final confirmation” from Brussels, Mr. Le Maire said Thursday morning that he had “won the case” with the European authorities on several measures to simplify the window.
The Minister was thus pleased to have “obtained the doubling to 4, 50 and 100 million euros” of the maximum amounts of aid to companies.
The latter could also ask for an “advance payment” on these aids, in order to give them “immediate cash flow to get through the coming weeks”.
The government hopes to finally convince Brussels to take the year 2022 as a reference for calculating the share of energy bills in turnover, rather than the year 2021 which has been taken into account so far.
Very small businesses (less than 10 employees and less than 2 million in sales) will continue to benefit from the regulated electricity sales tariff, which has been capped at 15% in 2023.
