EU opens door to funding nuclear energy in next budget

By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Commission wants to open up part of its proposed 2 trillion euro EU budget for 2028-2034 to nuclear energy, a move likely to divide the bloc's member states, which Germany immediately rejected.

In an annex to its mammoth budget proposal published on Wednesday, the Commission listed nuclear power as an activity countries can fund through their national share of the budget - specifically, "new or additional fission energy capacity installed in GW".

Around 865 billion euros of EU funding will be available under these national spending plans. 

The move would be a sea change for the EU, whose current budget does not fund conventional nuclear power plants - reflecting a long-running conflict between pro-nuclear EU members like France and Sweden and traditionally anti-nuclear countries like Germany and Austria.

"Germany rejects any subsidization of nuclear power from the EU budget," its environment minister Carsten Schneider said on Thursday, adding that Berlin respected the choice of other countries to build reactors.

"However, respect for national sovereignty in energy matters also means not claiming EU funds for this expensive path, a quarter of which comes from German taxpayers' money," Schneider said.

France's energy ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Swedish energy minister Ebba Busch declined to comment.

The Commission's budget proposal marks the start of years of intense negotiations among EU nations, which must all approve the final budget.

EU countries have long been at loggerheads over whether to promote atomic power to reduce CO2 emissions, a dispute which has delayed policymaking on climate change and energy in the bloc.

That dynamic had appeared on the cusp of a shift earlier this year, when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz signalled Berlin would no longer object to treating nuclear power on a par with renewable energy in EU policies. 

Countries including Denmark and Italy had also signalled a shift in their past opposition to nuclear power. 

However, some EU diplomats said that this softening of positions had not extended into support for EU funding. 

"There is no chance EU money goes to new nuclear," one EU country diplomat said.

The EU's current budget explicitly bans member states from building nuclear power plants using their share of hundreds of billions of euros in regional development funds - although the budget offers some limited funds for nuclear research and decommissioning of old reactors.   

(Reporting by Kate Abnett; additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Holger Hansen, America Hernandez, Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Hugh Lawson)