As the EDP board prepare to reject the takeover bid from China Three Gorges, the Left Bloc leader, Catarina Martins said that if Chinese deal goes ahead, this would be, "a particularly dangerous move."
"How do we explain that the Portuguese State cannot control our energy and that the Chinese State can?"
This bid is particularly dangerous, says Martins, because the Chinese government already has a large degree of control over REN and EDP through several State-owned companies and this will “increase our dependence on a foreign state.”
"These strategic sectors of the economy must have public control and nothing more proves the hypocrisy of European legislation than what is happening with EDP because it says that Portugal cannot own its own energy, but the Chinese State can,” said the Left Bloc leader, adding that, "strategic sectors of the economy should be public."
"It was a mistake to privatise energy. What we should be thinking about now is how we take it public again," concluded Martins.
China's Chinese Three Gorges announced last Friday that it was mounting a bid to take control of EDP.
Bloomberg said today that EDP is preparing to reject the takeover bid as the board claims that the offer per share is too low.
China Three Gorges, founded in 1993 to build and manage the world's largest hydroelectric project based in central China, is directly overseen by the Chinese Government, like most major Chinese companies.
China Three Gorges, which also wants EDP Renovaveis as part of the EDP deal, presents itself as "the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world and the leading Chinese group in clean energy."
The company is said to have offered €3.26 a share for EDP and seeks to hold at least a 50% voting stake, plus one share, in the company. It also offered €7.33 a share for EDP Renovaveis, an offer pitched below its Friday closing price of €7.84.