However, before talking about the administered price, we should first focus on the European energy policy in the field of electricity. Has the European Union really developed a common policy? No. Each member state remains free to choose which sources of energy to promote or to freeze. Till now, the only decision regards the effort against climate change. It is known as the 5 twenties: 20% less C02 emissions, 20% energy savings and 20% renewables by 2020. But, even this rule can be criticized. Firstly, on what is based the choice of these objectives that seems to sound too well? Secondly, what is the point of the last objective? It is actually a way to achieve the first one. Nevertheless, one has to be careful with renewables (wind energy in particular) because their production is not very reliable and does not enable to have precise forecastings. Therefore, in order to secure the production, one has to resort to other sources like liquid fuel which cannot be regarded as environment-friendly. Besides, a European common policy does not mean a single policy for every state, but an integrated policy which takes the complementary means and needs within the European Union into account.
However, though a single energy policy is not expected, there must be a fair distribution of the constraints and especially the risks inherent in each technology. And despite the high level of safety, atomic energy remains much more dangerous in case of incident. This is the reason why some countries refuse to operate nuclear plants and, because of this varying acceptance, European Union will face a lot of difficulties to implement a common policy.

Thus, a single market appears like nonsense without a single policy.
Indeed, the French nuclear fleet results from a political decision. As a consequence, the French people, who made this choice, must benefit from it. The EU Commission for Competition should not consider the electricity price as an advantage given by the French government to favour the companies on its territory. The citizens of every country throughout Europe can make the same decision to get a lower price of energy.
Therefore, the existence of an administered price in France appears to be justified.
One can argue against the regulated price that, if it was abolished, the additional profit would stay in France and mainly come back to the State through taxes and dividends. However, the State is not the only stockholder; it possesses about 84.7% of the shares. And one has to keep in mind that the nuclear fleet results more from a political decision than from an industrial choice. Therefore, would it be acceptable if a part of this additional profit would be given to stockholders who do not deserve it more than the other French citizens? In addition, the State would get back most of the money, but it would not help the users to cope with the jump in their energy expenditure. It raises actually an important issue: who should benefit from the extra earnings of the State? Every citizen because even the one who would not use electricity would face a nuclear hazard or only the users depending on their consumption because the French nuclear strategy was meant to make the territory more competitive?

Nevertheless, although I support the administered price, I do not say it must remain unchanged. There are relevant criticisms and the solution could be a variable administered price.
The price could be calculated with the real cost of electricity. For nuclear energy, it means the production cost and the cost of the renewing of the fleet (conception and building of new plants and dismantling of old ones). Thus, the future generations will not have to bear the cost of the renewing alone. Regarding peak production, the price would include the cost of nuclear energy and of the others sources, as the market price varies depending on the technologies used.
Customers could be informed of the electricity price with smart meters (*). However, if this solution costs too much or is too difficult to implement, fixed prices could also be defined depending on the hour and the season or the month, for instance. In both cases, since users would know the current price of electricity, they would no more behave as they do with the present administered price. They would avoid to waste energy, they would anticipate or postpone some activities in order to do them when electricity is cheaper. As a consequence, demand peaks would be lower and producers would resort less to polluting energy sources.

To conclude, this system remains complicated. In particular, it would be difficult to set the variable administered price of electricity. Moreover, it does not solve the competition problem within France insofar as EdF has still to give access to its nuclear production capacity to its rivals to enable them to compete, which is not a satisfying solution (**).
Nevertheless, contrary to a simple abolition of the administered price, it has the huge advantage to take the political dimension of nuclear energy into account.
But, once again, one notices that the true and only solution consists in having a European common energy policy, which includes the political dimension of nuclear power.

* This technology has already been well developed for water supply. Lyonnaise des Eaux has installed smart meters for most of its customers in Paris (Les Echos, March 24th, 2009).
** Regulating access to nuclear power plants through antitrust!, François Lévêque, April 4th, 2008