In this week’s program “Déclic – Le Tournant”, the former boss of Electrabel opens up, without waffling, and says all the bad things he thinks regarding the way we liberalized 20 years ago. , the electricity and gas market. Here are a few selected pieces.
“At the turn of the millennium, first the European Commission and then the Member States then gave a kind of primacy to the market. The Market was supposed to solve everything, all the time and for everyone… But there is a series of sectors where this cannot work: for strategic goods and for public service goods, but energy combines both. an energy crisis, like the one we are experiencing”.
The choice of the Verhofstadt government
Piquantly, Jean-Pierre Hansen recalls that Belgium, at the time (late 90s and early 2000s) supported this vision. “The Verhofstadt government at the time was a great defender of this view: “everything by the market”. Incidentally, the parties that were in power at the time are pretty much the same ones that are in power today.“. Editor’s note: it was the “rainbow” government made up of liberals, socialists and greens.
The blindness of the commission
Was it naivety? For the ex-boss of Engie-Electrabel “the naivety is to have put oneself in the clutches of Vladimir Putin for the gas supply. But to have left all the energy in the hands of the market is blindness! For 20 years, a whole series of players and specialists in the sector have been saying that this model does not hold up. Yet the commission did not want to change its model“.
Discover the full interview with Jean-Pierre Hansen, in this episode of your new PODCAST “Déclic – Le Tournant” which intends to feed the societal debate on the many societal shifts that are looming before us. Understand in order to act.
