Creation of L'ANODE, Association of Electricity Providers Designed to Promote the Construction of a Fully Efficient Liberalized Market in France

ATEL, CENTRICA, DIRECT ENERGIE, HEWenergies, and POWEO
announced the creation, on September 7, 2006, of L'ANODE - Association
Nationale des Operateurs Detaillants en Electricite (National
Association of Electricity Providers), open to all alternative
electricity providers in France, and designed to defend their
professional and moral interests.
In connection with the draft law concerning the energy sector,
L'ANODE intends to promote the construction in France of a fully
efficient liberalized market, in other words offering to all French
consumers the addition of the benefits of the competition and the
competitive edge of the French nuclear power policy.
As such, L'ANODE supports the maintenance and permanence of the
regulated rates reflecting this competitive edge at all times for all
eligible commercial or private consumers, in parallel with the
introduction of a mechanism for direct transfer of nuclear electricity
to alternative providers to supply their customers.
Such regulated program for supplying electricity, which was
recommended by the CRE (Commission de Regulation de l'Energie)
(Commission for Energy Regulation), is designed to reestablish
competition in the commercial market and to introduce it in the
residential market without causing a sudden price increase.
The suggested device would allow fighting the current malfunctions
in the establishment of the prices of the European electricity market,
which are explained by the absence of a common European energy policy
that does not allow offering to French consumers the benefits of the
specificity of the French nuclear asset.
Taking into account the proposal of L'ANODE may come with a
proposal for partial reversibility of the "Rapporteur" (overseer of
the law) and seems indispensable so that the opening of the market to
residential consumers by the deadline of July 1, 2007 does not lead to
less protection for consumers and to an actual reduction in
competition, which would certainly be penalized by the European
Commission.