'The English power stations - like its girls - are ours'

After decades of being told that the dirigiste Gallic "model" was doomed to failure, the French cockerel might be excused for crowing over the triumph of Electricite de France.

In the week when George Bush became an old-fashioned interventionist, the privatised British energy industry was invaded by an all-conquering national champion, 84.8 per cent owned by the French state.

Actually, the EDF coup was greeted in France - especially on the Left - with hostility and anxiety.

The left-wing newspaper Liberation recalled a raunchy French sex- and-sun B movie from the 1970s entitled A nous les petites anglaises (The English girls are all ours).

The Liberation headline on the EDF takeover was "A nous les vielles centrales anglaises" (The ageing English power stations are all ours).

Union leaders at EDF complained that their company had paid top euro for a struggling company with obsolete equipment.

The deal, they said, could "sink" EDF, or at least squeeze much- needed investment and, eventually, wages in France.

The unions, and some senior executives within the company, were already doubtful about the rapid foreign expansion that has seen EDF become the world's second-largest energy company behind Russia's Gazprom.

It has subsidiary companies or large interests in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Ivory Coast, Vietnam, China and the United States.

Some of these investments - especially those in Brazil, Argentina and Italy - have piled up debts for a company that was once cash- rich. Some commentators in France have even referred to the rash foreign investments - and then crash - of the state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais in the early 1990s.

This is a false comparison. Credit Lyonnais got into trouble by investing wildly in countries and industries that it did not understand. EDF has expanded by selling its expertise as the world's biggest, and most efficient, generator of nuclear power.

EDF's rise has been based on its curious status - reminiscent of Chinese companies - as a state-owned, and state-protected, enterprise with a political licence to exploit free markets abroad.

The French power giant has also benefited from the strategic decision taken by France in the 1960s and 1970s to become a nuclear- dependent country.

EDF has 58 nuclear reactors on 19 different sites, which produce 88 per cent of France's electricity.

With its foreign subsidiaries, EDF produced 20 per cent of all the electricity in the European Union - even before the British Energy deal.

While other countries have agonised about nuclear safety, and restrained nuclear research and development, France has plunged ahead with the third generation of reactors. Until recently, the voice of the green and anti-nuclear lobby in France has hardly been heard.

Then a series of leaks and scares at the large nuclear site at Tricastin in the Rhne Valley this summer finally started a national debate on nuclear safety.

But the debate is unlikely to go far. France is so utterly dependent on nuclear power that it has become a non-issue for most parties of both Left and Right.

So EDF's strength is rooted in a cosy relationship with a pro- nuclear state, and the overall boss of the group, Pierre Gadonneix, made it clear last week that he expected to have an equally good arrangement with the British government.

The powerful EDF unions suggested this was the real reason why he agreed to pay so much for British Energy. EDF could easily, they said, have invaded the British market and won contracts to build new power stations in Britain, without owning British Energy. But the EDF top management preferred to act as an honoured guest, rather than as an intruder.

How odd global financial politics have become.

Left-wing French unions are complaining that their state-owned French company should act more ruthlessly in conquering markets abroad.

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