EDF’s future ex-boss regrets the insufficient commitment of the State to finance nuclear recovery

Obvious from EDF, Luc Rémont defends his record and spreads his differences with the state in an interview on Monday at the “Figaro”.

The CEO of the public group EDF, Luc Rémont, was noted his next dismissal by the Minister of the Economy for divergences of strategic views, Friday March 21, 2025. Three days later, Monday, there are no dead hands in the columns Figaro. For Luc Rémont, there is,“A real degradation in the capacity of the State to conceive of change in the business economy, to make decisions and to make its word”. A small sentence at the bend of a long interview which will not leave Emmanuel Macron indifferent to the time of the breakfast of breakfast at the Élysée. The boss soon to be dismissed regrets the insufficient commitment of the State to finance the revival of nuclear. After his predecessor Jean-Bernar Lévy, Luc Rémont is the expiatory victim of repeated political errors for more than a decade and the policy of “stop-and-go” on nuclear decided at the highest level of the state.

Everything happened very quickly. The fate of the CEO of EDF was sealed on Friday when the Minister of the Economy told him his non-recondition at the head of the company in the summer of 2025. Luc Rémont found himself thanked a few days after a nuclear policy council gathered around the President of the Republic, stage on the advancement of the construction program of six new generation EPR2 reactors. Not fast enough, estimates the Élysée Palace, to which was added a sling of bosses of large industrial groups in the face of the pressure put by EDF on the prices to be paid for the supply of energy. The cut was full, the Élysée pressed the button of the ejecting seat.

Luc Rémont arrived at the head of the company at the worst time. It was in 2022, at the height of the energy crisis and while a large part of the electrical park was stopped due to the corrosion problems of the facilities. The CEO has managed to restore the operational and financial performance of the company. But when taking office, the end (2026) was also emerged from the electricity price definition system to manufacturers which had been in force for fifteen years.

This system has been criticized and pointed out as contrary to the interests of the EDF group which is now indebted up to 54 billion euros. For the economist Patrice Geoffron – who directs the center of energy and raw materials – this crisis at the head of EDF reveals the difficulties of France in confronting the investment wall in electrical matters, from the extension of the lifespan of the current nuclear fleet to the maintenance of distribution networks by passing the management of renewable energies. A very complicated industrial and political situation that the successor to Luc Rémont, Bernard Fontana, current boss of Framatoma, another great nuclear specialist, will have to manage.