Purchasing power: the Constitutional Council validates the two laws, with reservations

Nothing now stands in the way of their promulgation.

The purchasing power law and the amending finance law for 2022, which also contains measures aimed at relieving the wallets of the French, were validated by the Constitutional Council on Friday – each with two reservations of interpretation.

These two texts had been adopted by the National Assembly and the Senate several days ago.

More than 60 deputies and more than 60 senators had lodged an appeal against each of the two texts.

Parliamentarians from the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) had denounced measures contrary to “several principles” and “values” constitutional.

They had notably pinned “the monetization of working time recovery days (RTT)” and the “removal of the audiovisual fee”.

Fuel discount, increase in retirement pensions...

The two texts provide in particular for the increase of 4% in retirement pensions, social benefits, social minima and the activity bonus, the strengthening of the fuel discount or the abolition of the audiovisual license fee.

During the examination of the purchasing power bill, the deputies had also approved, against the advice of the government, the increase in the regulated price at which EDF is obliged to resell part of its nuclear electricity to its competitors, going from 42 euros currently at "at least 49.5 euros" per megawatt hour (MWh) from January 1, 2023. This obligation, known as Arenh (Regulated access to historical nuclear electricity), was imposed on EDF since 2011 as part of the opening up of the electricity market to competition.

The senators behind the appeal on this text considered that "the setting of this new price did not take into account

", as required in 2019 by a previous decision of the Constitutional Council.

However, the elected officials observed that "the productive capacity is less today" because of "the shutdown of certain reactors".