The parliamentary commission of inquiry on the sovereignty and energy independence of France intends to hear former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande “in late February, early March” in the Assembly, said MP Raphael Schellenberger LR.
“This will probably be the first time that a commission of inquiry receives former presidents of the Republic. It will come at the end of the course, that is, at the end of February, beginning of March, not before,” said Schellenberger, who chairs the commission.
“No invitation has yet been extended. Both have made it known that they are available to the commission of inquiry, we thank them,” he said.
Contacted, the entourage of François Hollande underlines however that he “awaits the official invitation to decide”.
“We will not fail to invite them” but not to “summon them”, a “distinction” claimed by Raphaël Schellenberger by “respect of our institutions”, he underlined during a press briefing.
The LR deputies have exercised their “right to draw” in the Assembly to launch this commission of inquiry “to establish the reasons for the loss of sovereignty and energy independence of France.
They regularly criticize the policies of François Hollande and the first five years of Emmanuel Macron, pointing to the closure of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, long disputed by Raphäel Schellenberger, MP for Haut-Rhin.
The Alsatian parliamentarian assures that the commission of inquiry will not focus on the subject at all. “The decision to close Fessenheim is only the tree that hides the forest of bad energy decisions”, he considers.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande clashed sharply over nuclear energy during the televised debate between the two parties. The outgoing president had accused the socialist of having “sacrificed” this industry for “a miserable agreement” with the Greens.
François Hollande had reaffirmed that he was “not bound to the Greens on this part of the agreement”, claiming an energy mix between nuclear and renewable energy.
But the rapporteur of the commission, the deputy (Renaissance) of Haute-Savoie Antoine Armand, prefers an analysis “over the long term” of what led to the “current situation” and on the “means to regain independence” in energy, rather than a search for “individual responsibility”.
The two MPs want to produce a “serious” and “rigorous” work, for conclusions in the spring.
