The French government will nationalize its financially-struggling nuclear giant Electricite de France SA to help it ride out Europe’s worst energy crisis in a generation, Bloomberg News reported. “The climate emergency requires strong, radical decisions. We need to have full control of the production and our energy future. We must ensure our sovereignty faced with the consequences of the war and the colossal challenges ahead,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said during her policy speech in parliament in Paris on Wednesday.
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France
France’s public finances have reached an “alert level” amid rising interest rates, surging inflation and dwindling growth, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, Bloomberg News reported. The candid warning comes as President Emmanuel Macron’s government seeks to negotiate a revised 2022 budget with opposition parties after he lost his majority at the National Assembly in elections earlier this month. “Not everything is possible, quite simply because we have reached an alert level for public finances,” Le Maire said on BFM TV Monday.
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French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday that the euro zone was "in the middle of an inflation peak" which would last until the end of the year "at least", but added there was still a lot of uncertainty, Reuters reported. Le Maire told Les Echos in an interview that he expects inflation levels to remain high until the end of 2023, adding that "even after 2023, inflation will be structurally higher than what we have been experiencing for the last few decades." Euro zone inflation rose to another record last month, boosting government bond yields.
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France's economy should avoid falling into recession during the current quarter after contracting in the first three months of the year, the central bank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The euro zone's second-biggest economy will grow around 0.25% in the three months to the end of June from the first quarter when it shrank 0.2%, the Bank of France said, revising its second quarter estimate marginally higher from 0.2% last month.
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President Emmanuel Macron aims to reform France’s pension system by the summer of 2023, he told French news outlets in his first extended interview since his re-election in April, Bloomberg News reported. The reform, which initially aimed to lift the retirement age from 62 to 65, is essential to financing Macron’s larger ambitions for his second five-year term. He discussed those plans in an interview with Le Parisien and regional French news outlets. Macron, who planned to reform the retirement system in 2020, had to postpone the change when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
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Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election on a pro-business, pro-European Union platform, bolstering the bloc in the midst of its worst security crisis in decades, Bloomberg News reported. With counting still under way, projections by France’s five main pollsters put Macron on course to win about 58% of the vote in Sunday’s runoff compared with 42% for Le Pen. The euro rose after the nationalist leader conceded defeat in a speech to her supporters in Paris.
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As President Emmanuel Macron far-right candidate Marine Le Pen cross France in a whirlwind of last-minute campaigning, their runoff will hinge to a large extent on perceptions of the economy, the New York Times reported. Worries about widening economic insecurity, and the surging cost of living amid the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine, have become top issues in the race, ahead of security and immigration. Ms.
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French financial prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into suspected tax fraud by American management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the Associated Press reported. The national financial prosecutor’s office said Wednesday the investigation was launched last week for alleged “money-laundering aggravated by tax fraud.” French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “shocked” by the suspicions of tax evasion on the part of consulting firms. “The response will be European, since we have passed a reform which will allow ...
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Delta Air Lines Inc. said it’s working with Air France-KLM as the Paris-based airline considers joining in the bidding for a stake in Italy’s state-owned carrier, Bloomberg reported. Italia Tranporto Aereo would be a welcome recruit to the North Atlantic alliance led by Delta, according to Ed Bastian, the U.S. carrier’s chief executive officer. “Air France-KLM is in the lead in terms of actually making a potential investment,” Bastian said in a briefing in London on Tuesday.
Electricite de France SA forecast a deeper hit to earnings from falling nuclear output and the French government’s cap on power prices for consumers, highlighting its vulnerability to Europe’s escalating energy crisis, Bloomberg reported. EDF had already warned it would be squeezed this year, with its French atomic output dropping to a three-decade low due to reactor works. The situation has been worsened by a government decision to force EDF to sell more power at a discount and to delay part of a tariff hike for customers.