+200 euros on the electricity bill: this little line will go up in smoke and everyone will have to pay for it

This discreet increase will nevertheless go unnoticed .

This is a small bombshell that the French could have done without. While Michel Barnier has promised not to increase taxes for the vast majority of households, the Prime Minister is nevertheless considering taxing the entire population using another lever: taxes. Not all of them, of course, but through one that is little known to the general public.

For months, the rise in the price of electricity has seemed unstoppable. +38% between January 2022 and February 2024: the pill was hard to swallow for households. But the former government had promised: this time is over and the bill will go down! By 10%! At least, that was the initial announcement. In the meantime, things have changed. And while the bill should go down, it will hide a scam that few households will pay attention to. 

The electricity bill is broken down into several parts: the pure price of electricity, the costs related to the electricity network and its maintenance, as well as a tax collected by the State. This tax, the TICFE (or CSPE, its former name), represented almost nothing on the total to be paid: it had been reduced to 1 euro/MwH to compensate for the increase in the cost of producing and transporting electricity. Now that these have decreased, the State wants to fill its coffers again. Raised to 21 euro/MwH, it was to rise to 32 euro/MwH on 1 February, its level before the start of the war in Ukraine. But Michel Barnier wants to go much further.

According to Les Echos, the Prime Minister wants to increase the cost of this tax to 40 or 42 euros/MwH in 2025 in order to obtain additional revenue for the State budget. A dizzying increase. For example, for an apartment of 60m2 (consumption of 4800KwH/year), the annual amount of the TICFE will increase from 120 to 230 euros. For a house of 100m² (10000KwH/year), this will increase from 250 to 480 euros per year. These are the average consumption levels established by Engie according to the type of housing.

But will this increase really hurt the wallet?? A priori, no. Most households should not feel the effects of this tax increase. Indeed, the government claims that the pure cost of electricity will decrease so much that from January that, despite the tax hike, the bill will still go down. But certainly not by 10% as initially promised. Unless Parliament opposes this drastic increase…