🚨️ How nuclear proponents are gaining ground in Brussels

Brussels (Belgium), July 24, 2025 (AFP) - The “Nuclear Alliance” facing the “Friends of Renewables”. In Brussels, a power struggle has long pitted France against Germany over energy, but the cause of the atom is gaining ground in recent months in the European Union.

Proponents of nuclear energy are hoping to win a new trophy in mid-July.

In its proposal for the future 2028-2034 budget, which kicks off two years of negotiations, the Commission seems, without giving details, to pave the way for European funding in favour of the atom.

This would be the lifting of a taboo in Europe.

Is the EU ready to finance the construction of new reactors?

Questioned by AFP, the Commission was careful not to answer precisely this question, which was sensitive among the Twenty-Seven.

But a spokesperson mentions areas that are “potentially eligible” for European funding: “activities” of “nuclear fission”, research, the “dismantling of nuclear installations” and the “management of radioactive waste”.

This “proposal must still be discussed with the Member States”, insists the executive, who as often plays a balancing act between France and Germany, where Angela Merkel announced an accelerated exit from nuclear power in 2011, after the Fukushima disaster.

Since 2023, the two states have each had an informal club of countries to defend their energy priorities.

Around France, the “European Nuclear Alliance” is gaining new supporters.

After Belgium in February, Italy indicated in mid-June that it joined the supporters of the atom, alongside Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, the Czech Republic, Romania, Romania, Romania, the Czech Republic, Romania, Romania, Romania, Romania, Romania, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Romania, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Romania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden in mid-June.

And Greece could do the same.

“The expansion of the Alliance makes the subject a bit unavoidable”, underlines Neil Makaroff, an expert on climate transition issues at the Strategic Perspectives think tank.

These countries want “to make nuclear energy neutral politically”, he explains, when the atom was one of the deepest fault lines in the EU in recent years.

Religious war

Along with Austria, Germany is part of the “Friends of Renewables” alongside Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Baltic States in particular.

Everyone has their own informal breakfast on the days of the energy ministers' councils, with some countries such as the Netherlands sailing between the two meetings.

But the divide is shallower than it was two years ago: more and more governments are emphasizing the complementarity of different energies to accelerate the electrification of the continent.

France has even been banking on Germany's openness since the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz signed a press op-ed with Emmanuel Macron in May, praising “technological neutrality”, i.e. “a non-discriminatory treatment of all low-carbon energies in the European Union”.

“The Germans are ready” to get out of “the religious war on nuclear power”, launched the French minister in charge of energy, Marc Ferracci, at the end of May.

But opinions differ between ministers within the German coalition.

And would Germany, a net contributor to the European Union budget, go so far as to accept European nuclear funds?

“This can potentially be a source of conflict,” said Neil Makaroff.

With another battle in the coming months: the future of European legislation on renewable energies, which France would like to transform into a directive on “carbon-free energies” in order to include nuclear power.

At the beginning of July, Paris already claimed a “victory” in a Commission proposal on the EU's climate target in 2040, because the European executive mentions in black and white the concept of “technological neutrality” so dear to the French.

Even in the most nuclear-intensive scenarios, wind and solar will nevertheless dominate the European energy mix in the coming decades.

In 2024, according to the latest Eurostat data, renewable energies represented 47.3% of electricity production in the EU compared to 23.4% for nuclear energy.

“In the short term, most of the work on electrification will involve renewables,” warns Neil Makaroff.

When it comes to wind and solar energy, France is regularly singled out by Brussels for lagging behind European goals.

“All rights reserved. ©2025 Agence France-Presse”.