The name of the Company is: “Électricité de France”. The Company may also be legally designated by the acronym “EDF”.
The Company’s registered office is at 22-30 Avenue de Wagram in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
The telephone number is 33(0) 1 40 42 22 22.
The Company is registered with the Paris Trade and Companies Registry under number 552 081 317. Its APE code is 3511Z.
EDF was incorporated pursuant to Act no. 46–628 of 8 April 1946 as a French public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC). It was converted into a French société anonyme (public limited company) by the Act of 9 August 2004 and the Application Decree of 17 November 2004.
The Company was incorporated for a term of 99 years as from 19 November 2004, unless the Company is dissolved before such date or unless its term is extended.
Since 20 November 2004, EDF has been a French société anonyme (public limited company) with a Board of Directors. It is governed by the laws and regulations applicable to commercial companies, in particular the French Commercial Code, except in the event of specific exceptions stipulated in the French Energy Code or Order no. 2014-948 of 20 August 2014 on the governance and capital transactions of companies with State holdings and by its articles of association.
This section describes the main legal proceedings except the one covered in note 17.3 to the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022 (section 6.1) and any material developments in those proceedings that have occurred between the approval of the financial statements and the filing date of this document.
To the knowledge of the Company, there are no administrative, legal or arbitration proceedings (including any pending or threatened proceedings of which the Company is aware) likely to have or having had in the past 12 months a material impact on the financial situation or the profitability of the Company and/or the Group with the exception of those described below and those described in the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022.
As part of an AMF investigation into financial information provided to the markets since July 2013, the AMF notified EDF of two grievances on 5 April 2019, which EDF challenged. On 28 July 2020, the AMF Commission des sanctions (Enforcement Committee) imposed financial penalties of €5 million on EDF for a failure consisting in the dissemination of false or misleading information in connection with the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in a press release dated 21 October 2013 entitled “Agreement on the Commercial Terms of Contracts for the Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Plant Project”.
In contrast, the Enforcement Committee ruled out any breach of the obligation to disclose as soon as possible inside information relating to EDF’s decision to pursue the Hinkley Point C project as part of the full consolidation in the Group’s financial statements, which was disclosed to the market on 21 September 2015, thereby exonerating both EDF and its current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in this respect.
On 5 October 2020, EDF appealed against this decision to the Paris Court of Appeal in respect of the sole complaint against it. Following EDF’s appeal, the AMF Chairman also filed a cross-appeal against the Enforcement Committee’s decision on 3 December 2020, requesting that the amount of the fine imposed on EDF be raised to €8 million. However, the AMF Chairman’s cross-appeal does not challenge the Enforcement Committee’s decision to dismiss the second complaint. Consequently, the decision of the Enforcement Commission regarding this issue is now final.
In a ruling dated 30 June 2022, the Paris Court of Appeal (i) overturned the decision of the Enforcement Committee of 28 July 2020, except insofar as it exonerated the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in office on the date of the proceedings and (ii) dismissed the cross-appeal lodged by the Chairman of the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF).
On 1 December 2016, the CRE (French Energy Regulation Commission) launched an investigation into whether EDF and its subsidiaries EDF Trading Limited and EDFT Markets Limited were guilty of engaging, between 2016 and 2017, in practices that could constitute breaches of the provisions of regulation (EU) no. 1227/2011 of 25 October 2011 on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT).
In two rulings issued on 25 April 2022, the CRE’s Dispute Resolution and Enforcement Committee (CORDiS) fined EDF €500,000 for (i) not publishing information on the unavailability of certain production assets until after the ASN decision, in this case one day late, and (ii) carrying out transactions on the market on the basis of said information before it was published on that day; and fined EDFT €50,000 in respect of an operational error, constituting market manipulation. As no appeals were lodged against them, these rulings have become final.
Furthermore, the Dutch Competition Authority (ACM) responsible for enforcing the REMIT regulation in the Netherlands opened an investigation into the availability of the Sloe power plant (Dutch-based CCGT) on 26 March 2019, and sent EDF and EDFT a notification of objections on 19 November 2020. The ACM definitively closed the investigation against EDF and EDFT in a ruling dated 27 May 2022.
NGOs and associations appealed against administrative authorisations related to the generation plants.
A certain number of authorisations and permits related to the Group’s generation plants (ASN, decisions by the Prefecture, decrees, orders, etc.) have been challenged before the courts, mainly by environmental associations.
On 22 February 2022, the French Competition Authority (“ADLC”) sanctioned the EDF group in the amount of €300 million for dominant position abuse practices that would have enabled it to maintain its market shares in the electricity supply sector and to strengthen its position in the associated gas and energy services supply markets. In this decision, which follows a complaint filed in 2017 by Engie (see note 17.3 to the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022 in section 6.1), the ADLC criticises EDF for having used data from the files of its TRV eligible customers, as well as the commercial infrastructure dedicated to the management of TRV contracts, in order to develop the commercialisation of market offers for gas and energy services.
