On Tuesday 11 July, a number of Member States that advocate the use of nuclear energy on a European scale met in the ‘Nuclear Alliance’, on the fringes of the informal meeting of energy ministers in Valladolid. This is the fourth meeting of this type, the last having taken place in Paris on 16 May (see EUROPE 13183/10). The participants presented the European Commission with a roadmap for “successfully relaunching nuclear power in Europe”.
At the initiative of France, this fourth meeting was attended by ministers and representatives from 14 Member States: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden, as well as Belgium and Italy as observers, who did not take part in the debate or the drafting of the conclusions.
Firstly, they reaffirmed the complementary nature of nuclear technologies and renewable energies “to achieve the EU’s climate and energy security objectives”.
They then presented the European Commission with a roadmap designed to recognise the “vital role” of nuclear energy and emphasising “the sovereign right of Member States to determine their energy mix”.
The roadmap highlights the need to “guarantee sufficient incentives to promote nuclear energies in terms of targets, efforts to facilitate authorisation procedures and access to financing, as is the case for renewable energies”.
Division on the inclusion of nuclear power in the reform of the electricity market
They also discussed the negotiations underway in the Council of the EU on the reform of the electricity market (see EUROPE 13213/9), with a view to implementation for nuclear-generated electricity.
In parallel with this meeting, 12 “like-minded” Member States (Belgium, Estonia, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, the Netherlands, Latvia, Italy and Austria) met on the initiative of Austria, which told EUROPE that the group had met “specifically to coordinate the design of the electricity market” and that France, the initiator of the ‘Nuclear Alliance’, had not been invited.
To see the ‘Nuclear Alliance’ roadmap: https://aeur.eu/f/80y (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)