On Friday 19 December, the European Parliament’s Nuclear Energy Focus Group published its Position Paper on the Nuclear Illustrative Programme (PINC), which will be presented in its final version in spring 2026 (see EUROPE 13659/11).
Announced a few weeks ago (see EUROPE 13758/8), this position paper invites the European Commission to accompany this final PINC on the assessment of nuclear investment needs with an action plan aimed specifically at facilitating and intensifying such investment at EU level.
This plan should define a coherent package of measures “to establish the appropriate framework conditions, provide long term visibility and policy predictability, support increased convergence of regulatory approaches, and enable Member States to deliver resilient, future-proof nuclear infrastructure”.
The Nuclear Energy Focus Group is also calling for the reference scenario set out in the initial PINC communication presented in June 2025 to be “updated”.
For this focus group, the Commission’s baseline projection of 109 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050 underestimates the pace of planned life extensions to existing plants. In addition, it does not take into account the number of new large reactors or the planned installed capacity of small modular reactors (SMRs).
The group is therefore calling for the targets and projects announced in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) to be used as a basis, which, when aggregated, would make it possible to achieve 150 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050.
Recognition of nuclear power. The document also insists that nuclear power must be “fully recognised” within the EU taxonomy, but also that access to European funds, a predictable State aid framework and the launch of a nuclear IPCEI (Nuclear Important Project of Common European Interest) are needed.
The note was presented to the European Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jørgensen, on Wednesday 17 December in Strasbourg, by the Chair of the informal group, French MEP Christophe Grudler (Renew Europe), along with Alexandr Vondra (ECR, Czech), Ľubica Karvašová (Renew Europe, Slovak), Tsvetelina Penkova (S&D, Bulgarian) and Ondřej Krutílek (ECR, Czech).
To see the Position Paper: https://aeur.eu/f/k3o (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)