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Germany has eliminated its long -term hero opposition to nuclear energy, in the first concrete sign of approach with France by the new Berlin government led by conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Berlin has pointed out to Paris that he will no longer block French efforts to ensure that nuclear energy is in question with renewable energy in EU legislation, according to French and German officials.
The measure resolves an important dispute between the two countries that has delayed decisions on EU’s energy policy, including the management of the crisis that followed the large -scale invasion of Ukraine of Russia.
“The Germans tell us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear energy,” said a senior French diplomat involved in the conversations. This meean that “all biases against nuclear energy, which still remain here and there in EU legislation, will be eliminated.”
“This will be a change of sea change policy,” said a German official.
Reversion occurs when Merz seeks to explore forms of Germany to Jin France’s nuclear shield as a striker against the future Russian aggression. “Now we are finally open to talk to France about nuclear deterrence for Europe. Later than ever,” said the German official.
“It is a welcome approach that will facilitate the issue of energy in the EU,” Gentram Wolff, main member of Bruegel thought. “Politician, Merz is also thinking about the nuclear umbrella.”
Berlin’s reversal in nuclear energy is part of Merz’s efforts to revive Franco-German cooperation, a previous condition for important decisions at the EU level that stagnated under former Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“When France and Germany agree, it is a lot that Europe progresses,” said Lars-Hendrik Röller, professor at the ESMT Business School based in Berlin who was the main economic advisor of former Foreign Minister Angela Merkel. “While several challenges remain, I think this problem will be solved.”
Merz, who won the elections in February, has criticized his country’s decision to get out of nuclear energy in 2011, under the rival of the Merkel party, who said he was depriving Germany of cheap and reliable electricity.
Merz also criticized his predecessor Scholz for closing the last three nuclear centrals in Germany, even when the country dealt with high energy prices. While it does not plan to travel conventional nuclear centrals, it has promised to invest in new technologies, including small modular reactors and nuclear fusion, which, unlike fission, does not produce long -lived nuclear waste.
The New Franco-German entente in energy is based on a land of enthusiasm for nuclear energy since gasoline prices reached high record after the Moscow war in Ukraine.
Leave Austria as the only state of the EU strictly opposite to nuclear energy. Countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium, have recommended atomic energy, having previously compromised to close the reactors.
In a letter sent to the European Commission on Friday, seen by the Financial Times, the ministers of 12 EU member states with nuclear reactors said it was “imperative” that the EU recognized the “complementary nature of the sources of nuclear and renewable energy.”
They requested an update of an existing survey of the nuclear sector of the block to pave the way for governments to provide state assistance to nuclear projects and send a “clear signal” to companies and investors on the benefits of atomic power.
Germany, which covered more than 60 percent of its electricity consumption with renewable energy last year, for a long time opposed Paris’s impulse to label atomic power as “green.” France derives around 70 percent of its electricity from atomic power.
The Conerns de Berlin in part of Conerns’ votes that the French industry would obtain a competitive advantage thanks to its fleet of 56 strong reactors, while the German industry still fights with the impact of the high prices of fuel gasoline.
It also has an ideological problem in Germany, where the Antinuclear Green Party was part of the Plaice government.
The confrontation results in long debates about the inclusion of the words “Low Carbon”, as a synonym for legal texts of the EU of nuclear energy, particularly those related to renewable energy and the production of hydrogen, which Berlin saw German energy energy.
“To guarantee our energy sovereignty when respecting national elections, we are asking for the end of all European discrimination against low carbon energies, whether nuclear or renewable,” said the trip of French president Emmanuel Merz a to To To To To To a Bo.
For example, Germany’s new position means that hydrogen produced from nuclear energy should now be treated with the hydrogen made of wind or solar energy, said the French official.
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