Universal Registration Document 2020

Details of the EDF group’s commitments, policies and actions are provided later inthis chapter.

EDF, a responsible business during the sanitary crisis⁽¹⁾

The EDF group deployed specific measures covering its employees, customers and suppliers, and provided essential support for local authorities.

In France, for its residential clients, it suspended any reductions or outages of electricity and gas supplies as well as late-payment penalties up until 1 September 2020⁽²⁾. For customers facing payment issues, EDF relaxed its payment terms, conditions and periods, covering a broader scope and longer duration than the measures put in place by public authorities. These exceptional measures were extended without change for the second lockdown and up until 15 January 2021.

For its business customers in France, the Group took all necessary measures to enable its customers eligible for the state financial support in response to the sanitary crisis to defer payment of their bills, in accordance with the orders and decrees adopted by the French government. This meant that any small businesses affected were able to apply for deferral of the payment of their outstanding bills until the end of the sanitary state of emergency, before paying in instalments over a 6-month period.

The Group also granted its customers payment facilities in Italy, Belgium and theUnited Kingdom.

In France, EDF maintained ties with all its customers during the first lockdown through the hard work of 3,000 remote advisors, who provided the necessary quality of service and support. All EDF’s tools and services remained accessible through the dedicated customer spaces on the site edf.fr ⓦ and through the “EDF & Moi” mobile app. The EDF group also provided businesses with a “Restart Pack”, i.e. a set of custom services to make the everyday life of businesses easier upon the resumption of activities (emergency assistance service, sanitary compliance support, etc.).

Since the start of the sanitary crisis, the EDF group’s absolute priority has been to make sure it protects and preserves the health of its employees, as well as to guarantee the continuity of its public service missions in France. The Group set up specific organisational and sanitary measures to combat the Covid, particularly by providing personal protective equipment, changing the layout of premises, organising remote work, supplying 10,000 extra computer workstations and even ensuring the resilience of its computer network infrastructure, enabling the successful handling of 70,000 simultaneous logins.

In addition to these measures, and by virtue of the principle of shared vigilance, theGroup’s businesses have paid and continue to pay special attention to preventing psychosocial risks from affecting employees. Management endeavours to take account of each employee’s individual personal and professional situation. Specific schemes were put in place such as a dedicated 24/7 listening and psychological support unit (not only accessible to employees but also their families and service providers), widespread e-learning and even publication of regular stress prevention and management content on the Group intranet platform. Social dialogue has remained active (see section 3.5.2.4 “Social dialogue”).

In France, the Group paid bills owed to VSE and SME suppliers⁽³⁾ prior to the expiry of the contractual 60-day payment period. The scheme covered services completed and approved by EDF on 31 March 2020, which saw EDF SA paying VSE suppliers before mid-April and SME suppliers before the end of April, without them having to take any specific measures. Dalkia and EDF Renewables also adopted an equivalent strategy, as did Enedis⁽⁴⁾. This payment period reduction initially covered nearly twenty thousand bills, totalling around €190 million Group-wide in France. The scheme was progressively extended until the end of the first half-year, in line with the end of the state of sanitary emergency on 10 July 2020. As a result, nearly €500 million were paid in advance to the Group’s VSE and SME suppliers in France between April and June 2020.

With support from Fondation Abbé Pierre, EDF gave its employees in France the opportunity to help insecure households to pay their electricity bills, irrespective of their supplier. For every euro paid by employees to the don d’énergie (i.e. energy donation) scheme, EDF paid an extra euro to help fund energy insecurity prevention campaigns. In March 2020, just as France was entering its first lockdown, EDF decided to make its EDF HUMAN PACT employee engagement platform a key tool to boost social ties between employees working remotely and isolated individuals through associations spread all across France. This initiative is part of the “locked down but connected” programme, set up at the start of the lockdown, which enabled them to take action remotely on three high-priority themes: assisting isolated individuals, providing school support in disadvantaged areas, and supporting vocational integration projects. 1,200 employees signed up for this programme, which is still ongoing.

In Italy, during the first wave of the sanitary crisis from March to May 2020, Edison made a €1.5 million donation. In addition to supporting research, this donation helped health facilities in the most hard-hit areas and supported various projects combating the social consequences of the crisis identified by Edison employees and local communities. This donation was raised through an employee crowd funding campaign, matched euro for euro by Edison.

For its part, the EDF group Foundation set up a €2 million Emergency & SolidarityFund. Early projects supported by this fund included: distributing quality meals to healthcare personnel in France, supplying computers to allow young people in disadvantaged areas to study remotely, issuing service vouchers to homeless people, and even supplying mobile hygiene kits to vulnerable families and healthcare personnel in Africa.