{"id":10733,"date":"2025-04-11T12:21:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/10733\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T12:21:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:21:21","slug":"how-france-first-doomed-a-nuclear-ceo-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/10733\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018France First\u2019 doomed a nuclear CEO \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>R\u00e9mont\u2019s European ambitions also raised questions. The EDF boss, already involved in projects in the U.K. and France, is also pitching reactors across the continent, from the Czech Republic to Sweden, Italy and Poland. Asked about the strategy after presenting the 2024 finances, he said his goal is to create \u201csufficient space\u201d to bring the European nuclear industry \u201cto the highest level of performance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barre and other government officials have long questioned that approach. In the same interview with POLITICO, he agreed that \u201cwe need to be present\u201d abroad, but said any foreign work by EDF must be \u201cin synergy with the French program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You scratch my back, I\u2019ll scratch yours<\/p>\n<p>In parallel, the government was irked with R\u00e9mont for not handing out enough preferential contracts to energy-hungry manufacturers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In France, industrial giants have long benefited from access to fixed-cost nuclear energy. But that perk is scheduled to shut down at the end of the year, leaving the government searching for a replacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, it thought it had one. After heated discussions during which R\u00e9mont repeatedly threatened to resign, the two sides reached a vague agreement that was never made public.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2198633150-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6368337\"  \/>Jo\u00ebl Barre, the French government\u2019s watchdog for its nuclear power efforts, told POLITICO several weeks ago that the slipping timeline was partly due to the country\u2019s political gridlock in 2024. | Alex Martin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Under the terms of the deal, which POLITICO reviewed, EDF would offer favorable, long-term contracts to key industries \u2014\u00a0steel, aluminum, chemicals. In exchange the government would effectively free EDF from state control<strong> <\/strong>on the commercial side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"R\u00e9mont\u2019s European ambitions also raised questions. The EDF boss, already involved in projects in the U.K. and France,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[1312,34,35,2000,299,36,806,43,1303,46,1217],"class_list":{"0":"post-10733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-electricity","9":"tag-emmanuel-macron","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-industry","15":"tag-macron","16":"tag-nuclear-power","17":"tag-policy","18":"tag-protectionism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114319306559595550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}