Policymakers, industrial stakeholders discuss European competitiveness at nucleareurope 2025 Annual Conference

On 4 and 5 June 2025, nucleareurope organised its Annual Conference, #NuclearEurope2025, in Brussels, to discuss the question of how to strengthen European competitiveness.

The two-day conference brought together leaders from the nuclear sector, representatives from key European industries, senior officials from the European Commission, Parliament and the Member States to debate this question. Topics covered included energy sovereignty & security of supply, affordability, reaching net-zero, workforce and skills needs as well as innovation & technology leadership.

Following welcoming words by nucleareurope President Xavier Ursat, the event’s opening session was centred around fireside chats with European Commission’s Director General for Energy Ditte Juul Jørgensen, Polish Ministry of Industry Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure and Secretary of State Wojciech Wrochna, and Member of the European Parliament Christophe Grudler, before Xavier Ursat’s own fireside chat closed the session.

The first panel of the conference then explored questions of energy sovereignty and affordability.

The panel included a diverse range of speakers: Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive of the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) and Hugues Hinterlang, Head of EU Public Affairs for Orano represented the nuclear industry ; Małgosia Rybak, Climate Change & Energy Director of the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) and Jean-Baptiste Léger, Head of the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF) Green Transition Department gave the perspective of end users, while Charlotte Nørlund-Matthiessen, Member of Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen’s Cabinet provided a policymaker’s point of view on the topic. Finally, Fabien Roques, Compass Lexecon Executive Vice President, explained how more nuclear can lead to faster decarbonisation, lower costs, and increased security of energy supplies in the EU.

Following the panel’s fruitful discussion, the first day of the conference ended with a high-level walking dinner, which included interventions from the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Industry and Trade Deputy Minister Tomáš Ehler and nucleareurope Director General Emmanuel Brutin.

“Today’s interventions allowed to stress essential policy messages on the importance of homegrown energy sources, such as nuclear, for the energy transition. Speakers from a diverse range of sectors explored the essential topics of energy sovereignty and affordability.” noted Brutin, highlighting key takeaways from the discussion, such as the need to mobilise all net-zero technologies, the importance of ensuring that energy intensive industries have access to sufficient clean and affordable energy, and the role that nuclear will keep playing in the energy transition, with installed nuclear capacity set to reach over 140GW by 2050.

The second day of the conference tackled questions of decarbonisation, supply chain, skills, digitalisation, and the European energy mix. It started with a keynote address from Framatome’s Frédéric Lelièvre, before participants broke out into three parallel sessions, organised by the #NuclearEurope2025 silver sponsors.

The first breakout session, organised by PEJ, explored the role of nuclear in the energy mix. it focused on how nuclear can answer the current energy trilemma: security of supply, affordability and decarbonisation. The second breakout session, organised by newcleo, was centred around the question of building a European supply chain for Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRs). Its focus was on the supply chain needs for the rapid deployment of AMRs, including the fuel cycle. It looked at how to scale up manufacturing in Europe in particular. The third breakout session, organised by CAELUS, discussed digitalisation for nuclear and with nuclear. It explored how digital tools, such as Artificial Intelligence, can help the nuclear industry speed up its processes, for example the licencing of new facilities. 

Following the three breakout sessions, a panel discussion was organised on the topic of reaching net-zero. Panellists discussed challenges to the decarbonisation of energy intensive industries – with Peter Claes, President of the International Federation of Industrial Energy Consumers (IFIEC) Europe and Sandrine Devos, Head of Public Affairs for the European Industrial Gases Association (EIGA) outlining policy needs for the decarbonisation of their respective sectors. The main aspects of the decarbonisation of transport in Europe were also detailed by Transport and Environment Brussels’ Executive Director William Todts. Solutions to incentivise the deployment of net-zero technologies were presented by Dassault Systèmes’ Infrastructure and Clean Energy Director Audrey Goulven-Priori, who highlighted how their solutions can support the acceleration of the roll out of clean energy sources, such as nuclear, in Europe. Finally, a more global perspective on decarbonisation was given by Brent Wanner, Head of the Power Sector Unit at the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook.

The afternoon of the conference allowed participants to delve into questions related to the nuclear fuel cycle and supply chain, as well as skills and workforce needs. 

Following a keynote address from Urenco’s Chief Operating Officer Bridget Sparrow, who discussed pathways to ramp up European nuclear fuel manufacturing, a panel discussion took place on the topic of skills and supply chain.

As an introduction to the discussion, Marius Vasilescu, Advisory Partner at Deloitte Romania presented the latest social and economic impact of nuclear report conducted by Deloitte, which stresses the benefits of nuclear for European competitiveness. It specifically notes that nuclear, which currently supports close to a million jobs in the EU, could support up to 1.5 million jobs by 2050, in a 150GW installed nuclear capacity scenario. Panellists then delved further into the topic of skills needs, with Domenico Rossetti di Valdalbero, Euratom Research Deputy Head of Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, providing important insights into existing initiatives to support upskilling and reskilling in Europe, such as the Skills4Nuclear project. Lavinia Rizea, Nuclear Energy Attaché at the Permanent Representation of Romania to the European Union gave a national perspective to the discussion. She stressed the importance of initiatives at national levels to complement European policies and address specific needs. Finally, Pietro Francesconi, Commercial Director at Tectubi Raccordi’s Nuclear Division highlighted how upcoming investments in nuclear will be associated with a need to ramp up manufacturing capacity in Europe to support the nuclear supply chain.

With #NuclearEurope2025 coming to a close, Emmanuel Brutin summed up the two days’ discussions in his concluding remarks, stressing the benefits of dialogues involving a variety of stakeholders to address future challenges and chart a path towards a net-zero, competitive Europe.