France’s 84 percent state-owned energy giant Électricité de France (EDF) is getting a new boss – six months earlier than originally planned. The reason is the broken relationship between the current boss Jean-Bernard Lévy and President Emmanuel Macron. Lévy had repeatedly publicly criticized the government. The manager blamed politics for the deplorable state of EDF – technical problems in the power plant park, nuclear power production at a 30-year low, market value shrunk to less than 50 billion euros. Like his predecessor François Hollande, Macron initially pursued a nuclear phase-out based on the German model, whereupon EDF, operator of all 56 French reactors, trained fewer staff – staff that are desperately needed now that Macron has declared nuclear energy to be the technology of the future. “We now lack qualified employees,” Lévy said recently.
With his criticism of state intervention in the electricity market, the outgoing EDF boss was even less secretive. Lévy called the Arenh tariff, which obliges the energy giant to sell nuclear power to competitors at a discounted, state-regulated price, “a poison that over the past ten years has directly contributed to making EDF an over-indebted player that has been rated five times by the rating agencies.” downgraded, which has sold assets worth more than €10 billion and has been recapitalized at €4 billion.” When the government then increased the Arenh volume by 20 percent at the beginning of the year, it was enough for Lévy, and he sued the state for 8.34 billion euros in damages. Macron called the EDF boss’s criticism “unacceptable”, “wrong” and “irresponsible”. Now he is stepping down after eight years.