Closure of the Fessenheim EPR: Elisabeth Borne’s discourse has evolved over the past two years

At the end of the back-to-school government seminar, Wednesday August 31, a journalist asked Elisabeth Borne about the closure of the Fessenheim power plant in 2020. Was it retrospectively a mistake, in the situation of energy shortage that threatens us? The First minister replied that this decision was not that of his government, and that it had been taken during the five-year term of François Hollande.

But Elisabeth Borne has not always held this discourse. It was even rather, according to her, a courageous political action that no one had taken before President Emmanuel Macron. “That For years we have been saying: ‘Nuclear power plants must be closed’. There are those who talk about it, and then there are those who do it. We, we do”, so said Elisabeth Borne on June 30, 2020. If the effective closure dates from February 2020, the political will to close Fessenheim existed already under François Hollande, who made it a campaign promise in 2012. Confirmed by a decree in 2017, the closure was not implemented quickly, in particular because of delays in the Flamanville EPR construction site (Sleeve)which was to take over.