The French far-right would like to disconnect from the European electricity system

The leaders of the French far-right want to radically change the country’s energy system based on their election speeches.

They suggest that France must withdraw from the European energy market and return to “French electricity.” The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on the matter.

The chairman of the Republican party, Les Républicains Eric Ciottin thinks that breaking away from the rest of Europe would bring back “autonomous electricity production” and affordable electricity prices.

The main candidate of the National Alliance Jordan Bardella similarly devised an electricity price formation for France independent of other countries, something he calls the French electricity price.

Bardella will based on the recent election results, probably the Prime Minister of France. In France, there will be a second round of elections on July 7, just like in Finland only in the presidential elections, because the party of the future prime minister must get more than half of the seats in the parliament.

Radical proposals for France’s withdrawal from the European energy market emerged during the just-held French parliamentary elections. The far-right parties won the election, which puts many wise men in Europe in a new position.

So one of them might be the energy market.

Free electricity for 30 years

The proposals of the French parties are surprising and disconnection would not be a trivial matter, as the European unified electricity market has been operating for almost 30 years.

The EU started to open the electricity market to competition in the 1990s. Until then, the national market was almost entirely in the hands of state-owned monopoly companies.

In Finland, the electricity market was liberalized in July 1995.

The aim of the competition was to increase efficiency and innovation, to use resources more efficiently and thus benefit everyone. The background is the EU’s basic idea of ​​the free movement of goods.

In practice, the European electricity market means electricity trade across national borders. For that purpose, power transmission networks have been built between different countries, but according to the EU Commission, more of them should be built rapidly.

Experts warn

Handelsblatt the interviewed experts warn of serious consequences for the energy systems of both the whole of Europe and France, including energy outages and price increases, if electricity trade between European countries is really cut off.

The first worried voices are heard from Germany about whether the import of French nuclear electricity to Germany will end in the future.

Right-wing parties in France have already criticized Germany’s energy policy, which emphasizes renewable forms of energy production. To the French far-right, solar and wind power and the hydrogen economy appear as expensive forms of energy production, from which France should be isolated.

France produces most of its electricity with nuclear power. Recently, it has also had to be reduced in situations of overproduction of wind and solar power, which is the cheapest form of electricity production.

In 2022, however, France suffered from problems with its nuclear power plants and had to shut them down. At that time, Ranka had enough electricity thanks to electricity imported from neighboring countries.