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The workplace of French Power Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher slammed European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen’s current feedback about nuclear not being “strategic” for EU decarbonisation and is planning a counter-offensive on the EU vitality ministers assembly in Brussels on Tuesday (28 March).
Learn the unique French article right here.
Nuclear energy, whether or not current or in improvement, shouldn’t be talked about within the record of “strategic” applied sciences listed within the European Fee’s Internet-Zero Trade Act (NZIA), offered on 16 March.
Forward of an EU summit final week, the French President’s workplace known as for readability on the matter, urging member states to determine “as soon as and for all” whether or not nuclear energy is an asset for the bloc’s decarbonisation or not.
Von der Leyen responded after the primary day of the summit, saying: “solely the net-zero applied sciences that we deem strategic for the longer term – like photo voltaic panels, batteries and electrolysers, for instance – have entry to the complete benefits and advantages” – which isn’t the case for nuclear energy.
These feedback solely stoked additional tensions with Paris.
EU not ‘constant’ on tech neutrality
At a press convention after the EU summit on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron reminded the EU’s legally-binding goal of attaining local weather neutrality by 2050.
“Clearly, there are renewable energies and France is investing massively of their deployment,” the French President stated. Nonetheless, “we all know that renewable energies can’t be sufficient and that nuclear vitality is a mandatory a part of the reply on the European degree,” he added.
“That is what corresponds to the very spirit of our treaties – respecting one another’s vitality mixes however preserving a precept of technological neutrality enshrined within the European treaties”.
Talking on Monday (27 March) earlier than a gathering of the EU’s Power Council in Brussels, the workplace of French Power Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher drove the purpose dwelling.
The Fee president’s feedback have been “unlucky” and “clearly not in keeping with the local weather problem to which nuclear energy and renewables are supposed to reply,” the minister’s workplace stated, recalling that the strategic nature of nuclear energy is recognised “with out ambiguity” within the EURATOM Treaty‘s preamble.
Based on Paris, it’s a matter of consistency in implementing the precept of technological neutrality, which the European Fee is making use of to e-fuels, on the demand of Germany.
Making use of this precept to e-fuels “on the grounds of technological neutrality, however refusing to take action with already current nuclear energy is inconsistent”, the French vitality minister’s workplace minister stated.
Nuclear alliance
Confronted with Brussels’ reservations on nuclear energy, Pannier-Runacher will deliver collectively the 11 member states collaborating within the nuclear alliance set in movement on the final EU summit in Stockholm.
The gathering of pro-nuclear international locations will happen in Brussels on Tuesday morning (28 March), in preparation of a wider assembly of EU vitality ministers in Brussels beginning at 10.00 CET.
Italy, which didn’t participate within the first assembly of the alliance, is now contemplating to take part, EURACTIV understands.
Collectively, these international locations type a blocking minority on the gasoline directive and the Renewable Energies Directive, that are at the moment being negotiated at EU degree.
On Wednesday, EU legislators will try to succeed in a closing settlement on renewables, together with the thorny situation of whether or not to incorporate nuclear-derived hydrogen within the calculation of the EU’s inexperienced transport objectives.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon]
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