Paul Magnette wants to “stop all negotiations with Engie”: “They have been playing with the government’s feet for months”

The leader of the Socialist Party came to present to Martin Buxant his new ecosocialist manifesto, “La vie large”. In this book, the Carolo returns to an issue that is more than ever at the heart of concerns in this context of energy crisis: the ecological transition.

“No obstacle is insurmountable. (…) We know what we must do to remedy the problem: stop burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Studies show that just by generalizing the most economical technologies in energy that already exist, we would save 70% of the energy we consume today. Technology is therefore a big part of the solution. Nuclear is just a transitional energy, it is not the future. Historically, this will have been the transition from yesterday’s oil and coal to tomorrow’s energy sobriety and renewable energy”began Paul Magnette on the set of LN24.

The socialist did not say he was closed to a temporary extension of nuclear power in Belgium to guarantee security of energy supply. “The most important thing is to know under what conditions we do it. I will always refuse that we extend power plants and that the profits go to Engie, that prices are not controlled, or that Engie’s debt be erased. Engie must finance the treatment of its nuclear waste and its denuclearization. These are fundamental conditions, we are not going to pay 7 billion to please Engie“. The socialist leader even went even further by saying that he wanted to stop all negotiations with the French energy industrial group. “It’s over, they are playing with the government’s feet and it’s been going on for months. Today, the government has the possibility and must tell Engie that now ‘you are being forced to produce in the name of the security of ‘supply such a quantity at a price set by the public authority and the regulator’. By buying at a lower market price, this will make it possible to greatly reduce the bill for private individuals. This holds up perfectly because the security of supply is an imperative. Public authorities must take matters into their own hands”he said without hesitation.

In the rest of the interview, Paul Magnette returned to the statements of the president of the MR affirming that the State should perhaps bear part of the costs of the treatment of Engie’s waste. “That is unacceptable. The price of waste must be paid by Engie and no one else because it has been integrated into the price of energy that Belgians have been paying for 40 years“According to the socialist, to counter this energy crisis, we absolutely need Europe to freeze gas prices.”This decision must be taken in addition to the decisions that we have taken at the Belgian level. We are one of the first countries to tax excess profits, this will bring in 3 billion. We will also tax the banks and the multinationals that do not pay enough taxes. This money, we then return it to the citizens, it is thanks to this that we know how to lower the VAT and reduce the invoice“, he explains.

Finally, Paul Magnette said that in order to achieve ecology, we needed everyone. “Everyone has to do it in their own way. We must attack inequalities, they are the engine of the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. It is imperative that we understand this. (…) The climate transition must be done in a social way with the prospect of a better life for all, especially for the middle class”he concludes.