EDF’s businessman and ex-CEO has a hard tooth against the energy policy carried out for several years by Emmanuel Macron. While the Parliament debates France’s objectives in energy matters until 2035, within the framework of the “Gremillet” bill, Henri Proglio advocated, this June 24 in the face of AJEF journalists, a policy of radical rupture, taking the opposite view of the energy objectives set by the French government.
Exit from the European electricity market and stopping renewable energies
Wind standing against wind turbines and renewable energies – for him too unstable –hostile to the new EPRs launched by the President of the Republic (who opposed the appointment of Henri Proglio to the presidency of Thales, when he was Minister of the Economy and Industry of François Hollande), the former CEO, favorable to a model of medium power reactor, openly defends a “Sovereignist offensive”.
According to him, “We have to get France out of the European energy market”. Based on the example of Spain and Portugal, which both opted for an independence policy in terms of fixing electricity prices, Henri Proglio wishes more precisely that France returns to an integrated EDF system, with a national price and a price for export fixed and controlled by the French State. He also castigates the pricing policy of Luc Rémont, ex-president of EDF, to whom Bernard Fontana succeeded, on 1er last April. Denouncing the margins produced by the public enterprise, he points to a policy contravening the “Just electricity price” and the public service obligations of the subsidiary.
On the file of intermittent energies, “The bankruptcy of green doctrine is Quite obvious. Renewable energies must be stopped whose subsidies weigh too much on the price of electricity ”he hammered.
Reinforcement of the French nuclear sector
Favorable to the strengthening of the French nuclear sector, Henri Proglio also attacked the lack of vision, according to him, of President Emmanuel Macron in the matter. Same reproach addressed to the French political class: “They sacrificed nuclear power while its competitiveness is a key element of our economy”. As for the EPRs, the businessman has always been against the model. Rather than building small reactors, he militates for an extension of 20 years of existing nuclear power plants, in order to give EDF time to design and build new power plants.
