PARIS (Reuters) – The Hercule project to reorganize EDF has been abandoned and the government will not go back on it, the Minister of Economy and Finance confirmed on Friday.
“Hercule is abandoned. Let’s be clear, we worked on it, we saw that it did not meet the expectations of the company (…) We will not be returning to Hercule”, declared Bruno Le Maire, in trip to the Penly nuclear power plant (Seine-Maritime).
This reorganization project, the outline of which was drawn up at the end of 2019, was intended to improve EDF’s investment and financing capacities by redeviding its activities into three separate entities: nuclear, renewable energies and networks.
Supported by the French government, Hercule, which was subsequently renamed “Grand EDF” aroused strong opposition from the unions and part of the political class, who feared a dismantling and the start of privatization of the group.
(Written by Kate Entringer)
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