The “agent rate”, a reduction on electricity and gas prices granted to EDF employees, “represents an excessive cost” for EDF SA, the group’s parent company, the Court of Auditors ruled this Friday in a report, considering that it could not “continue as it stands”. “The energy benefit in kind represents a disproportionate cost, i.e. more than 700 million euros in 2024 at the group level, also requiring the creation of social liabilities for its maintenance after employment (3.9 billion euros at the end of 2024). It cannot continue as it is,” judge the Sages of Rue Cambon in this report devoted to the management of human resources in the public enterprise. This historical component of the status of electricians and gas workers concerns employees but also retirees of companies from the historic operators EDF and GDF (including Engie, Enedis, GRDF, etc.) and other companies, including local energy distributors.
The publication of this report comes on the day when the four electricity and gas union federations (CGT, CFE-CGC, CFDT, FO) meet to set the terms of a “mobilization” against a challenge by the executive to this element of remuneration. The government is in fact considering reducing this “agent rate”, indicating that it has received “a formal notice from the Court of Auditors” to “come into compliance with the valuation of this gap (…) between this rate and the real value of energy”, according to the Ministry of Energy. A “questioning”, which the energy federations asked the Prime Minister “to renounce”, in a letter sent this week to Sébastien Lecornu. “Failing this, we will be able to mobilize, with all electricians and gas workers, to put an end to this attack on their social contract,” warned the four federations. The question should be decided in a ministerial decree.
A harsh report on EDF’s accounting
The Court recommends “reducing the energy advantage in stages, as a priority by capping the consumption taken into account” and “revaluing the tax and social scale” of this advantage “on the basis of the annual averages of regulated electricity sales prices and benchmark gas prices, all taxes included”. In this harsh report, the institution also recommends that EDF “limit annual salary increases” and take into account “the economic and financial situation and prospects of the company”, heavily in debt and facing a wall of investments, against a backdrop of nuclear revival.
The “agent rate” consists of a large discount on the invoice, modulated according to the composition of the household and the heating method, and subject to social security contributions (CSG and CRDS).
