Then Minister of the Economy, the Head of State had validated in 2014 the sale of the Alstom Energy Branch to the American General Electric.
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It was part of the few “to buckle before elections”, according to a member of the government. About to materialize after months of discussions under the attentive eye of Bercy and the Elysee, the redemption by EDF of the old nuclear activities of Alstom, and in particular the very emblematic turbines Arabel, will certainly constitute a strong political marker. For the future campaign of Emmanuel Macron.
It is indeed the former Minister of the Economy that had validated the sale of the Alstom Energy Branch to the US Group General Electric (GE) at the end of a process so controversial. had resulted in a strengthening of the regulation of foreign investment, and then on a commission of inquiry. But seven years after the sale of these assets considered as a strategic as a civilian and military point of view, the transaction paving the way up to their return to the French giron was the subject of a Board of Directors of the ‘electrician Monday 7 February in the evening.
For the head of state, the transaction has a great symbolic reach. It covers a much smaller perimeter than the sale of the Alstom Energy Branch at the end of 2014, since the assets then exceeded 12 billion euros, while the amounts mentioned these days are a little less than a billion euros. But repatriates under the French flag the manufacture of the turbines entering the construction of nuclear power plants is to repair a political decision which has not ceased to be criticized, first as Deputy Secretary General of the Elysee, then as Minister of the Economy from the summer of 2014. “Alstom is the original sin in the Macronian adventure,” said a few months ago Jérôme Sainte-Marie, president of the Pollingvox study company. A transaction experienced as an abandonment of sovereignty and who “gave the impression that the national interest was badly defended”. The member the Republicans of Eure-et-Loire Olivier Marleix, who had chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the sale of Alstom at GE in 2018, sees him a “Sparadrap of Captain Haddock” including Emmanuel Macron would like to escape.
Sensitive topic
Although Alstom’s activities in nuclear power have never left the territory, the staging of this return in France is justified as much as the stakes of sovereignty and adverse reconquest have taken special importance the last two years. COVID-19 has revealed the fragilities of some supply channels in the country at a critical moment. And the outbreak of gas and electricity prices in recent months has imposed the issue of energy independence at the heart of the campaign. The redemption of the turbines will be part of the Nuclear Renaissance Strategy by Emmanuel Macron in the second part of its five-year. The Head of State could make ads, Thursday, February 10, on his vision of the sector and the construction of new EPRs during a trip to Belfort, territory where the turbines are precisely made.
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