The European Union insists that EDF must sell energy at very discounted prices, so that third-party "providers" can make an entry on the energy market. The idea was that they would eventually sell their own energy supply, but most just pocketed the difference between the dirt-cheap energy & what they charged customers, then ran away the moment there was any hint of change on the horizon.
Or, to put it in simpler, blunter terms: in the name of "competition", EDF was forced to heavily subsidize companies that turned out to be nothing more than rent-seekers that only sought to, effectively, grab free subsidy money.
Here are some articles about it:
2022: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/10/edf-sues-fr... 2023: https://www.ft.com/content/e2fc3abf-4803-4561-8ef2-0c77fd2d0... 2024: https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/europes-under-radar-ind...
I'm not sure if I'm feeling better or worse that it's a EU invention. Either way, it's hellof a corrupt practice.
ARENH looks like a mechanism by which France wanted to entice competition in end customer sales (and distribution?) of electricity.
https://fsr.eui.eu/regulated-access-to-incumbent-nuclear-ele...
France chose to use the mechanism of ARENH. This isn't an EU thing.
That's usually how that works. The EU makes rules and national parliaments create local laws to comply.
Of course they could have chosen another way to comply, for example breaking up EDF. But they didn't want to do that, probably for good reasons.
For 2023 and 2024 EDF was profitable, with net income of those two years exceeding that 2022 loss.
Ouch!
EDF is generally highly profitable while at the same time delivering cheap, reliable power. 2023 was the one exception, due to the energy crisis and its interaction with the ARENH program that forces EDF to sell power from nuclear at a fixed low price (usually way below market).
Even if it needs that power itself.
So in 2022, it still had to sell this power at 4 cent/kWh, and then had to buy that same power back from the market at up to €1/kWh.