Mantua – criminal and environmental proceedings
Criminal proceedings
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Mantua has decided to initiate criminal proceedings against some executive directors working or having worked for Edison since 2015 and some of Edison’s representatives, due to alleged environmental offences, also on the basis of Legislative Decree 231 of 2001, which allegedly occurred in certain areas of the Mantua petrochemical plant. Such orders of the Province of Mantua were confirmed by the Council of State’s ruling of April 2020 as described below. These proceedings are ongoing.
The Mantua petrochemical plant – which Edison (as the successor of Montedison) has not owned or managed since 1990 – is subject to a large-scale and complex program of environmental clean-up and restoration activities which also regarded all of the areas targeted by the procedure initiated by the Public Prosecutor. The ENI group has initiated these activities. After the transfer of the clean-up projects to Edison in June of last year, following the previously mentioned ruling of the Council of State, Edison is carrying out large part of the activities.
Environmental procedure
Over the past few years, the Italian province of Mantua notified Edison of eight orders to rehabilitate the land and the whole Mantua petrochemical site sold by Montedison to the ENI group in 1990, despite two settlement agreements concerning these environmental issues signed by ENI and the Italian Ministry for the Environment.
Edison appealed against all these rulings before the Brescia Division of the Lombardy regional administrative court, but lost its appeal in August 2018. Edison then took the matter to the Italian Council of State, which rejected Edison’s appeal in a ruling of 1 April 2020 confirming the first-instance decisions. Edison pursued its appeal before the ECHR, and the proceedings are ongoing.
However, as mentioned above, Edison has already begun cleanup work on the site, taking over from the previous operators and conducting a series of tenders.
17.3.6 Investigations by France’s Competition Authority (“ADLC”)
At 31 December 2021 France’s Competition Authority (the ADLC) was investigating the EDF group in relation to four separate matters (the ENGIE complaint, the referral concerning heat networks, the Plüm complaint, the Xélan complaint), which are described in the notes to the consolidated financial statements at 31 December 2021.
- There were significant developments in the first half of 2022 in the investigation that which followed a complaint filed by ENGIE on 19 June 2017 relating to EDF’s commercial practices regarding retail electricity and gas sales, and specifically the circumstances in which EDF gave electricity suppliers, upon request, access to its file of customers paying the regulated “Green” and “Yellow” tariffs from the end of 2015, when these tariffs were about to be discontinued. Documents collected during search and seizure operations in November 2016 were used in the ENGIE proceedings. On 27 May 2021 EDF, Dalkia, Dalkia Smart Building, Citelum and Cham were notified of the ADLC’s objections concerning the markets for retail electricity and gas supply, multi- technique management/maintenance and energy optimisation services, and energy control measures leading to issuance of energy savings certificates. On 22 February 2022, the ADLC fined the EDF group €300 million for dominant position abuse practices that allegedly enabled it to maintain its market shares in the electricity supply sector and strengthen its position in the associated gas supply and energy services markets. EDF benefited from the settlement procedure in this case and made two commitments: firstly, to make its file of customers on the “blue” regulated tariff available to alternative electricity suppliers upon request, and secondly, to separate the telephone subscription process for existing and prospective “blue” tariff customers from the process for existing and prospective customers on market-price contracts. A related provision was recognised at 31 December 2021. It was reversed when the expense, which was disbursed in July 2022, was recognised (see note 17.2).
- In the investigation following an ex-officio referral to the ADLC on 4 November 2019 concerning the formation of a partnership for heat network operations, EDF, Dalkia, Électricité de Strasbourg, ES Services Energétiques and EDEV received initial notification of the ADLC’s objections on 3 May 2021, and an additional notification of objections on 8 July 2022. These notifications were the first step in a procedure that allows both sides to present their arguments. On 15 February 2023 the Rapporteur of the ADLC sent EDF her report in response to the observations made by the parties. The parties now have two months to make their observations on this report. The procedure will continue in 2023 and there is no indication as yet of the final outcome. There were no significant developments in the other two ADLC investigations. Finally, in a decision of 18 January 2022 the ADLC dismissed a complaint and application for interim measures made against EDF by ANODE (the national association of retail energy operators). This complaint concerned EDF’s refusal to provide access to the database of non-residential customers concerned by discontinuation of the “blue” regulated sales tariffs, who were switched automatically to a follow-on market-price contract at 31 December 2020. However, the ADLC considered that ANODE’s arguments were not backed up by sufficient evidence proving the existence of the alleged practices. ANODE filed an appeal against this decision on 1 March 2022 before the Paris Court of Appeal and in parallel, EDF made a declaration of voluntary intervention on 30 March 2022. The Court of Appeal ruled on 3 November 2022 that EDF’s declaration of voluntary intervention was inadmissible, considering that the ADLC should not have informed EDF of its decision to dismiss ANODE’s complaint. On 30 November 2022 EDF filed an appeal against this inadmissibility ruling. The appeal proceedings concerning the merits of the ADLC’s decision of 18 January 2022 are still ongoing.
