A new electricity tariff regulation in France would be neutral for French state-controlled power giant Electricite de France SA (EDF.FR) if the price is set at EUR42 per megawatt hour, EDF's Chief Financial Officer Thomas Piquemal said Wednesday in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

France 's parliament is due to consider the Nouvelle Organisation du Marche de l'Electricite, or NOME , bill, beginning next month. It would force EDF to sell part of its production to competitors at set prices.

"The price of EUR42/MWh requested by (EDF's Chairman and Chief Executive) Henri Proglio would be neutral for EDF's revenues compared to the existing situation including TarTAM," Piquemal said, referring to the regulated tariff for industrial-power clients.

"We would not make an additional profit at that price compared to the current situation," he said.

The French government has put forward legislation to address European Union antitrust concerns by giving EDF's competitors access to the relatively inexpensive power it generates from its fleet of 58 nuclear reactors.

NOME , set to be introduced in the French parliament in June, is meant to allow EDF's competitors to enter the French power distribution market and to build their own electricity production.

EDF's Proglio confirmed Tuesday during EDF's annual meeting that he had requested a price of EUR42/MWh for competitors to get that access, stressing that EDF can't sell its power to competitors below production costs.

"Would the price be below EUR42/MWh? That would mean lower revenues but at EUR42/MWh, the impact of the NOME law on our results would be neutral, compared to the current situation," Piquemal said.

"EDF currently sells directly or indirectly around 80TWh of power at around EUR42/MWh as part of the TarTAM industrial tariffs scheme," Piquemal noted, adding that "this volume would be included in the 100 terawatt hours contemplated by the draft NOME law."

Currently, EDF sells 80 terawatt hours of power to industrial customers under a state-regulated tariff system called the Transitory Regulated Market Balancing Price, or TarTAM. The special arrangement was designed to allow companies that use a lot of power but that had opted to buy it on the free market to come back into the regulated system.

"The EUR42/MWh price that EDF requests is consistent with the price set under the TarTAM scheme," Piquemal said.

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