Until then, the money deposited by the French on their booklet A was mainly used to finance social housing, the policy of the city of communities. There, the government plans to direct part of the hundreds of billions of euros that households put on these accounts to build future nuclear reactors, the new generation EPRs. And for good reason, these investments cost money, a lot of money. According to Eric Lombard, the director general of the Caisse des dépôts, to build six new nuclear reactors – as envisaged by Emmanuel Macron – this means a bill of around 60 billion euros.
Concretely, this means that part of the funds from the Caisse des dépôts would finance this construction program which could last at least ten years. Eric Lombard explains that today the Caisse des dépôts makes loans for more than 80 years on land, and it could therefore well make them the same way, over the very long term, for power stations.
There are currently more than 375 billion euros in French savings accounts. There is always the forced savings, which had been placed during the Covid: the households which had a little flexibility in their budgets had saved the money which they could not spend during the confinements and since then there has been the war in Ukraine, inflation, uncertainty… So many elements that encourage the French who can to be cautious, to create woolen socks in case of hard knocks. The livret A remains the preferred investment of the French – 55 million have one – especially with a rate raised since the beginning of the month at 3%.
It’s just a lead for now
Parliament must already confirm Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to build these six new EPRs. Politically, it is not so simple. The right would certainly support it; but on the left, this risks making environmentalists who are against these new reactors jump.
For financing, nothing is recorded, but it is clear that the government will prefer to approach the Caisse des dépôts, a public establishment, the armed wing of the State, rather than appealing to private funds.