Lunacie de France

19 September 2006 By Pierre Briancon

Some French MPs close to Nicolas Sarkozy are reviving an old project to merge the two companies and keep them in state s hands. The project is financially barmy. It is merely a political ploy that will make the current GdF privatisation debate more confusing.

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A week into the French parliament's debate on GdF's privatisation, a group of deputies close to interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy have voiced support for an alternate plan under which GdF would merge with electricity monopoly Electricite de France. The new entity would remain stateowned.

French president Jacques Chirac earlier this week reiterated his view that a merger between GdF and utility Suez was the best way to create a French national champion in energy, and insisted that there was no credible plan B.

Nicolas Sarkozy, when he was Finance Minister, had promised France's powerful energy unions that both EdF and GdF would remain at least 70% stateowned, and initiated the law that saw to it. When prime minister Dominique de Villepin earlier this year engineered the SuezGdF merger, Sarkozy first indicated a GdF privatisation would not be the only way to do it, before reluctantly agreeing with the government's plans.

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