The Transformation of the French Electricity Market Subject to European Convergence Wills

France is usually pointed out as « the bad student » of European Union regarding its late and slow implementation of renewable energies policy. This presentation aims at observing the effect between the EU's targets and the national transformation of the french market. As the energy is a shared competence between the EU and Member States (article 194 Treaty on the functioning of the EU) and energy policy is a State prerogative, we could observe the strong Eu's will to liberalise the electricity market and to develop renewable energies. This has destructured the french system (modified the role of the State, broke the monopoly of main stakeholders and added new economical and legislative policy tools etc). This lead to a « negative » europeanisation (Radaelli, 2003) : negative because forced, with the vertical level (EU) with legal constraints and an implementation in the national laws with horizontal level (restructuration of stakeholder's balance power). We can observe a « policy style », regarding national trajectories (Thatcher, 1999) and « a decoupling effect » (Meyer, Rowan, 1977) as there is a gap between the EU targets (opening,competition) and the maintenance of french specificities. Indeed, despite the numerous european legal texts for a full liberalisation, France still has a restricted electricity market's access as its main and historical stakeholder is dominating the electricity market (EDF, at 90%). The attempt to harmonize Member States' market underlines the french resistance to a full liberalisation. We are facing an « incremental progressive » liberalisation (Cashore, Howlett, 2007), because of too many possibilities to interpret the rule of law and political negociation/ compromise  in the competition law building (Reverdy, 2015) In the meantime, policy tools for developing renewable energies are questionned : from a technical and economical angle, it twists the electicity system (apparition of negative prices on the market, mothballing of some powerplants because of the « merit order » effect etc.), exemption of the competition rules etc. RE's policy tools are also challenged regarding the maturity of their technology at a national level (with the restructuration of the energy tax, considered as too expensive) or the EU level with the disparition of the feed in tariff in order to favor more public tenders. Thus, some national stakeholders, as the NGO Vent de Colère, repossessed the renewable energies supports mechanisms (as FIT) in order to slow down the development of renewable energies, while the french State stategy is quite unstable and doesn't attracked investors (suddun cancellation of support mechanism). But as the EU's will seems to develop more the energy common market (as expressed by the Energy Union Project) through the development of more interconnections between the Member States and insuring energy security, this presentation aims at observing an increase of the EU's competences in order to go further in the liberalisation process.