Today, we want to approach a particular aspect aroused by speculations around this subject, which claim that the idea of the energy for all would be incompatible with the interests of the employees of the Energy because this would suppose their not paid work. We thus want to clear up this problem by publishing below the point of view of the Association “Right to Energy”:

Assert that the energy is a vital good and to claim as a consequence : a right To energy” recognised as a fundamental human right does not mean that the energy should be delivered free of charge to its consumers.

However, its vital character allied to the rarity of the energy resources of the planet makes it, to our opinion, a common good of the humanity.

But to have energy, it is necessary to produce it. It thus enters the sphere of the production. It is not produced free of charge. At the same time, have it or not conditions the development of the individuals: their health, their education, their life expectation, their citizenship.. For a territory, a country or a continent, the access to the energy constitutes a first condition of the industrial, economic, social development. The energy is not thus “good as the others”.

That is why, States wanted to exercise their control on the energy and to endow their countries of public utilities susceptible to ensure the equality of access of their citizens, in particular to electricity.

The process of liberalisation led in the sector of the energy tends today to subject the electricity to the laws of the market, about which we know that it would be imaginary to lend them the virtue to insure “the optimal allowance” of the resources.

How to avoid that this context “plunges into the black” an increasing number of homes and deprived persons, brutally “erased” from the supply of energy and from the society?

From July 1^st, 2004 the big fair of the electricity, decided by the upholders of the liberalism, will begin to make its devastation through Europe.

It concerns the various producers such as : Italian Enel, Belgian Electrabel, German E.ON and RWE or Spanish Endesa and Iberdrola, the most important of all being EDF of France.

“The public sector is ineffective, the private successful”, claim the liberals. In the name of these principles, pounded but never proved, from London to Paris by way of Berlin, the power thus privatises in any complicity. With the total opening of the market of the electricity, the colossal profits announce for those who “will skim the market”, to the detriment of the users.

Since the opening in the competition, in 2000, the invoice of the energy has already increased on average by 50%. We have all the proofs to say that the European Commission lied: it failed in the opening of the markets of the electricity, because the promised valuable falls are not expected and Europe goes towards alarming energy dependence.

Indeed, the operated choice goes back to the time when, to modify a sector the increases of prices of which in Europe crystallised the dissatisfactions from 1970s, the European politicains did not adopt the EDF model, which had given evidence, but that of Mrs Thatcher. The privatised British electric sector showed performances among the worst in Europe, with superior prices of 25% to those whom EDF practised in this period.

Today, the rumbling discontent rises among the customers henceforth “free to choose” their suppliers, who denounce “a liberalisation with perverse effects”. To avoid the worst, the people in charge of this imminent disaster have only a solution: to have the courage to recognize publicly the committed fatal error and to stop this crazy train.