The war continues to drive up energy prices. In Europe, gas prices continue to rise on Thursday, following returning to highs in recent days. The price of Dutch TTF, the benchmark for the European natural gas market, exceeded the threshold of 300 euros per MWh.
Shutdown of production lines, economic unemployment… Companies are trying to adapt to rising energy and commodity prices. They say they are in danger. The cost of energy reaches, for the most energy-consuming companies, 50% of the charges, once morest 10-20% recently. These additional charges, coupled with the future indexation of wages, should represent an additional cost of 10 billion euros for companies.
Some companies are already resorting to economic unemployment. “It concerns absolutely everyone, as well as households. What households are feeling now, businesses are feeling too“, explains Cécile Neven, energy specialist at the Union Wallonne des Entreprises, on the airwaves of Bel RTL.
“Especially since there is also the indexation of wages, the difficulty of sourcing raw materials, the costs of which have also increased, in addition to problems of availability“, she adds.
“All these constraints accumulate and make life extremely complicated for all companies. Some companies are even asking themselves the question of closing production units. This has a major impact on employment, as we can clearly see. In Wallonia, we are not in a position to close production units, from an economic point of view. Our economic situation does not allow this. So, of course, everything must be done to ensure that this is not the case.“, specifies Cécile Neven.
Russian giant Gazprom announced last week that its deliveries of Russian gas to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline would be interrupted for three days, from August 31 to September 2, for “maintenance” reasons. Added to this is the drought, which complicates the river transport of coal and slows down hydroelectric production, and the unavailability of several French nuclear power plants.
