EDF, the French electricity utility, is connecting this week the Flamanville EPR nuclear reactor to the grid. That good news, yet, is accompanied by the usual negative comments regarding the exceptional length of the works (a 12 years delay) and the construction huge cost overruns (10 billion). If these points are undisputable, they must not mask another very positive reality for France which so has reestablished its capacity to build nuclear power plants. This one had been seriously affected by several major strategic mistakes.

There was first the refusal, at the end of the Nineties, by the successive governments to ...

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The large Donald Trump victory, at variance with the poll opinions which had estimated that the result will be very narrow, and the creation of a Republican majority in the Senate have allowed to give a real visibility to the prospects of the American economy for the coming years. In Europe, to the contrary, when the worries about growth were becoming worse, Germany, after France, was entering into an uncertainness period after the breaking off of the coalition which is governing the country and the call for snap elections at the Bundestag. If nothing is done, the spread already observed ...

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The approach of the maturities fixed by the European Commission begins to start to become aware about the challenges and the risks to which a strategic industrial sector is confronted with. It would be the time. In 2035, the sale of cars with a thermal engine will be forbidden. From 2025, the carmakers which will not reach a determined level of sales of private electric vehicles will be hurt by penalties which could reach several billion each year. These arrangements have as an objective to reduce the CO2 emissions of the States-members. They have been adopted by the European Parliament ...

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