Abstract
On July 2007 started the last step of the opening up of the energy market in France, i.e., of the electricity and gas markets. This process started in 1996 when the European Union decided to open up its market and liberalize it, in order to create one single market without monopoly. It was a big step for France, especially because the energy market was nationalized at the end of the Second World War. So, for sixty years the market was supplied by only two companies that held almost the whole market and which were working together. The main difference consists in allowing the 12 million particular consumers to change their energy supplier. Before that, the industrial market in energy supply was deregulated in 2003. However, this deregulation will be controlled by the State in order to protect the consumers and to avoid abuses. After the World War II, many modifications were made in order to change the infrastructures that remained before the war. One of them, and not the least, was the nationalization of the energy market because it was considered for long as a monopoly and inevitably related to the state. That is why the production and the distribution of electricity and gas were nationalized, in France, by the law of the April 8th 1946. This led to two major changes.
