The heads of state or government of seven European Union countries (the Czech Republic, Romania, France, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Poland) have sent a letter to the European Commission on 19 March calling on it to urgently ensure that there is a level playing field for nuclear power in the EU, without excluding it from European policies and incentivising measures in the field of climate and energy.
“We are highly concerned that a Member State’s right to choose between different energy sources and the right to determine the general structure of the energy supply (Article 194 TFEU) is currently heavily limited by EU policy making, which excludes nuclear power from more and more policies”, wrote the seven heads of state or government.
They said that nuclear power makes an indispensable contribution to the fight against climate change and the post-Covid recovery since it is a low-emission energy baseload, a “very promising source of low-carbon hydrogen at an affordable price” as well as a sector that generates “a considerable number of stable, quality jobs”.
Concerned about the lack of an appropriate framework for new nuclear construction, they have called on the Commission to ensure that the principle of technology neutrality is respected so that all available, and future, low and zero emission technologies are “treated equally within all policies, including the taxonomy of sustainable investments”.
Pending a report from the Joint Research Centre (the European Commission’s in-house scientific service), nuclear power remains excluded from the taxonomy for the time being, according to the latest draft of the delegated act intended to complete the EU taxonomy regulation (2020/852) (see EUROPE 12684/3).
Read the letter: https://bit.ly/3tPy1W3 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)