TRUE OR FAKE: who is responsible for the closure of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant?

On Wednesday August 31, at the end of the back-to-school government seminar, a journalist asked the Prime Minister: in the situation of energy shortage that threatens us, closing the Fessenheim nuclear power plant (Haut-Rhin) in 2020, retrospectively, was an error? “When the decision was taken in François Hollande’s five-year term to close Fessenheim, it means that the continuation of the activity was not possible”, replied Elisabeth Borne. Yet earlier she said it was a brave decision that no one had made before Emmanuel Macron.

So, who is responsible for the closure of the Alsatian power plant? If the effective closure dates from February 2020, François Hollande had made it a campaign promise in 2012. It had been confirmed by a decree in 2017, the closure was not implemented quickly, in particular because of the delay of the Flamanville EPR (Manche), which was to take over. The decision to close the oldest nuclear power plant was therefore taken under François Hollande’s five-year term, where Élisabeth Borne thought it was a very good idea.