Europe needs all of us to build its future.

Back in 2007 we wrote: “The EU is involved in constructing an energy Community in order to tackle the triple challenge of climate change, security of supply and competitiveness”.
Where are we in 2010? The Commission which has just been set up declared the ambition of a new internal Market policy and the Lisbon Treaty gives energy, which is recognised as a shared competency, an historic opportunity to become a European policy. This is an enormous challenge at a time when energy is at the heart of an industrial renewal and more sustainable growth! In this new report, Confrontations Europe continues the debate...

The EU has set itself the target of becoming the world’s first low-carbon economy by the year 2020. It has adopted an “Energy-Climate” package which the member states will have to implement. However, it lacks the social dimension and the industrial component to be able to roll out the low-carbon technologies across our territories, to remain the world’s leading competitor and to develop clean industries in the transport and construction sectors, as Jean-Louis Marchand from the FNTP explains. Furthermore, the climate protection objectives have created “sub-markets” (white, green certificates, CO2 quotas...) in a market which is already very fragmented, “with no show of solidarity between the East and the West”, says Edit Herczog with regret and without any real foreign policy, adds Helmut Schmitt von Sydow. The commissioner, Günter Oettinger places security of supply at the top of his priorities and suggests reducing the EU’s level of vulnerability in the short term by introducing a gas security regulation and, in the long term, by diversifying supply infrastructures. Jean- Marie Dauger from GDF SUEZ states that the gas policy is coming together but the oil taboo has still not been lifted in Europe, warns Jean-Marie Chevalier and nuclear energy still does not enjoy freedom of movement in the market... an issue which will be debated in Budapest in September.

Working on a new non-discriminatory market framework with levers for regulation, price setting, cross-border interconnections and the roll out of safe and competitive technologies... the challenges lie ahead of us: they will involve citizens and active members of civic society becoming mobile and the initiation of a great public debate across all of Europe. The major issue is one of democracy.

CONTENTS:
- The priorities of the new European Commission
- NABUCCO: the emancipation of European Gas
- Delors-Buzek:a little dynamite in the European agenda
Energy: Confrontations Europe answers the Commission and wants a non-discriminatory market!
- The role of natural gas in the European energy policy
- The countries of the East and security of supply
- Breaking the taboo of oil in Europe before the fourth crisis
- Positive reconversions for employment?
- Towards a comprehensive overhaul of the construction industry
- Nuclear energy in Europe: from acceptance to ownership
- European Nuclear Energy Leadership Academy reshapes training
- The revival of nuclear energy put to the test by political changes
- “Nuclear energy: its role and perception in the European legislation and in the Member States in 2010”
- Nuclear energy: the social debate in the European context

Energy File ENGLISH - Revue 91

TO KNOW MORE:
The Photos, slides,... of our 2010 conference on nuclear acceptance in Budapest
The whole Revue n°91 in French
The article of Claude Fischer : Nuclear Energy in Europe: from acceptance to ownership