“Showdown in Germany’s nuclear phase-out”

Hearings begin in Washington this week in the “heated court case” of Swedish utility Vattenfall suing Germany for almost 4.7 billion euros at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), write Michael Bauchmüller and Claus Hulverscheidt in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The utility had reacted to the German government’s 2011 decision to accelerate the nuclear phase-out, because it saw itself expropriated. Vattenfall argues that the state must compensate it for lost earnings and investments made when nuclear power still appeared to have a future in Germany. The German government sees the legal action as “inadmissible and unfounded,” write Bauchmüller and Hulverscheidt.

Read a short version of the article in German here.

For in-depth background, read the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out and the CLEW factsheet Legal disputes over the nuclear phase-out.