French trade union activists claimed responsibility for surprise power outages on Monday that delayed hundreds of thousands of rail passengers in Paris. They warned of more protests over plans for the partial privatisation of the country’s utilities.
The communist-backed CGT union said the outages were a response to attempts by the government to rush through new laws that would transform Electricite de France and Gaz de France from state agencies into listed companies.
Trains to and from Paris’s St Lazare station were severely disrupted by the outages that began at 3.30am local time on Monday morning, while three other main line stations suffered partial power losses. All services were back to normal by about midday.
”It’s a deliberate action in the face of a speed-up by the government, which is saying that the parliamentary debate could happen very quickly,” said Gerard Rodriguez, a senior official at the CGT’s mining and energy division.
”Throughout the week, there will be more actions like this,” Rodriguez said. ”We’re moving into a new rhythm.”
Power outages sometimes accompany strikes by EDF workers, who descended on Paris by the tens of thousands on May 27.
But the decision to target train stations without warning represents a departure from the usual tactics and a clear toughening of the union militants’ stance.
A group of militants also cut off power on Monday to the home of a conservative parliamentarian from the rural Lot region, Michel Roumegoux, who advocates reform of the national utilities, France-Info radio reported.
France’s national railway operator, the SNCF, said it will seek compensation from EDF after the cuts caused 250 trains to be cancelled or delayed, affecting about 500 000 passengers.
It said the Paris-Nord, Paris-Lyon and Montparnasse stations were also affected, although less severely than St Lazare.
The CGT and other unions have called a nationwide strike for June 15, when the government is set to present its partial privatisation plans to lawmakers.
Besides dropping their special status as public enterprises — as demanded by European Union authorities in Brussels — the conservative government wants to sell part of the two utilities on the stock market.
It argues its plans do not amount to privatisation, since it has pledged to retain controlling stakes in both groups as well as allowing employees to keep generous pensions and other advantages they enjoy as public sector workers.
Financial benefits such as cheap debt granted to EDF under the current French law have been repeatedly criticised by EU competition authorities, which in December ordered the power giant to pay back €900-million in tax breaks plus interest.
The European Commission also said it has obtained a commitment from France to end EDF’s special status as a public enterprise by the end of 2004.
The French government is pushing ahead with a wide-ranging privatisation program as it struggles to shore up its finances and rein in the bulging national debt. — Sapa-AP