The final closure of Fessenheim, the oldest nuclear power plant in France, will be effective in June 2020, announced EDF and the French State following an agreement to compensate the electrician for the industrial and personnel costs incurred. by shutting down the two reactors.
Only the network of associations Sortir du nuclear will take action before the European Commission for this compensation protocol, reports Liberation.
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According to information from the daily, Sortir dunuclear as well as the Stop Fessenheim and Alsace Nature associations brought legal action this Thursday morning with the European Commission in Brussels to request “the opening of an investigation for state aid”.
According to the spokesperson for the association network to our colleagues, “taxpayers do not have to bail out a company that seeks to impose its dangerous nuclear headlong rush” and the complaint is aimed in particular at the amount of this compensation deemed “staggering” as well as its basis of calculation.
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In the press release published by Sortir du nuclear and which the Express was able to consult, it is written that the protocol “can be qualified as State aid because it has the direct effect of granting a substantial and unjustified financial advantage to a economic agent operating on the electricity market: EDF SA”.
“This advantage thus facilitates its interventions in this market and distorts the game of free competition”, we can still read.
In addition to the 400 million euros in compensation that will follow the shutdown of the reactors, it is also provided for in the agreement “subsequent payments correspond to the possible loss of earnings” of the electrician. A loss of earnings which would be calculated on the basis of “the benefits that future production volumes would have brought in” over the next twenty years.
According to Exit Nuclear, the total sum of this compensation could then climb up to 4 billion euros. According to the collective, this figure is based on “the unrealistic assumption that the plant could have continued to operate until 2041”, he explains.
The network of associations hopes all the more to obtain the opening of an investigation, as this agreement between EDF and the State constitutes according to them “a dangerous precedent” and would only increase “the cost of the energetic transition”.
