“Hollande doesn’t shut down anything”

The French government’s order to decommission the contested nuclear reactor Fessenheim can’t make up for the fact that President Francois Hollande hasn’t pursued a French “Energiewende” due to resistance from the nuclear lobby, Leo Klimm writes in a commentary for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Like a state within the state, nuclear plant operator EDF dictates the energy policy,” he argues. Hollande accepted that EDF prevented the plant’s closure in 2016, brokered a 500-million-euro compensation by taxpayers and has now made opening a new nuclear plant the precondition for closing the 40-year-old reactor near the German border, Klimm writes. At the beginning of his term, Hollande said he wanted to shut down 24 nuclear plants – “now Hollande is leaving and hasn’t closed a single one,” Klimm says.

Read the commentary in German here.

For additional information, see the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out.