Abertis’ French subsidiary, Sanef, has reached an agreement with the French government to implement a new €147 million investment programme to modernise its network. It exchange, it has secured anual tariff hikes from 2019 to 2021.
“We are still generating 20% of our electricity with coal and this increased in 2016 compared with the previous year…It’s cheaper than gas. And that’s the point: no matter how much we try to establish targets, companies operate on a day-to-day basis, look for economic efficiency and use the cheapest form of energy available,” says Carmen Gómez de Barreda, board member at Red Eléctrica.
Francesco Saraceno | François Hollande will not seek reelection in May 2017. This is rather big news, even it if was all too logical given his approval ratings. But what went wrong with Hollande’s (almost) five years as a President?
Two founding member countries of the European Union are really in a bad way: France and Italy. Both are threatening to turn this giant with feet of clay upside down, when it still doesn’t know how to deal with Brexit or the unknown elements which Trump has in store in “his” new world order.
Spain has been trying to push ahead with two projects which are vitally important for its energy sector: the sale of gas and electricity (basically renewables) to the EU. With practically no positive results to date. In 2012, an agreement was reached with France and Brussels to increase the electricity and gas interconnections with Europe via the Pyrenees. But in spite of that, and the fact the money is already ready there, the investments required are taking much more time to materialise than they should.
In an article dedicated to the French economy, Timothy Taylor makes some interesting comments on the “mystery” that is France, one of the richest countries in the world, where you can breathe opulence as soon as you arrive there. But all this implies a degree of interventionism which has its consequences.
Recent surveys in both Germany and France indicate the perception on the part of companies that there will not be the necessary stimuli for economic activity to fuel an acceleration in the economic momentum.
F. Barciela / Fran G. Ljubetic | No to reforms. Despite having an unemployment rate of 10%, the French people feel very comfortable in their heavily subsidised State. France continues to atonish most of the world and Europe as its citizens staunchly reject any kind of reform to update working rights and conditions which, where they exist, are hard.
Jean Pisani-Ferry via Caixin | For the first time in several decades, a series of Western countries are simultaneously experiencing major political upheaval. In several of them, populist parties that challenge consensual principles and established policies, and candidates who define themselves as anti-system outsiders, are on the rise or already in power.
James Alexander via Historinhas| The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament recently held a session on NGDP Targeting. The French paper starts with a review of the literature on Inflation Targeting and says things went well until the crisis. A caveat they mention is that since both IT regimes and non-IT regimes did well in bringing down inflation it is really too hard to tell if IT was all that superior.