France – 62% say NO/62% disent NON

….to nuclear energy – but an opting out still is far away.

If  France’s nuclear energy programme would have been submitted to a referendum last Sunday, Europe’s nuclear number one might have had to opt out: according to an IFOP poll for Le Journal du Dimanche published that day, 62 % of the French favour closing down the countries’ 58 plants within 25 to 30 years.

…à l’énergie nucléaire – mais une sortie est encore loin. Si le programme nucléaire français aurait été soumis à un référendum le dimanche dernier, le fournisseur principal de l’Europe aurait bien pu avoir choisi de se retirer du marché. Selon un sondaged’ IFOP pour Le Journal du Dimanche, publié ce jour là, 62% des Français est favorable à une fermeture progressive des centrales d’ici à 25-30 ans.

22% favourable

Surprisingly, the percentage has grown since March when, just after the Fukushima disaster, 51 % of the population favoured such a choice. Accordingly, no more than 22 % of the population still is favourable to continuing the programme, against 30 % three months ago.

Because even 55 % of those who support president Sarkozy want France to pull out, the issue could become one of the hot potatoes during next years’ presidential elections. There is, however, one problem: only Europe Écologie-Les Verts and smaller left-wing parties demand an opting out. For both EELV’s leadership and candidate presidential candidate Eva Joly it even is a condition for the party’s participation in a left-wing cabinet.

Referendum

Counting on the growing opposition to nuclear energy, both EELV and Sortir du Nucléaire, France’s anti-nuclear movement’s network, have called for a referendum on the issue.  Such a referendum is, however, as unlikely to happen as a government decision. And even  if the government would agree to organise it, argues Stéphane LHomme, another candidate presidential candidate of EELV and president of the Observatoire du Nucléaire, it would manipulate the wording in such a way that the result would be meaningless.

Tomorrow, following a call from Sortir du Nucléaire, in almost 50 cities and towns people and political parties will go out on the streets to ask for an immediate closure of the country’s 58 reactors and to support ‘the people in Japan’.