ABSTRACT
A modern economy and society cannot thrive without abundant and reliable supplies of energy. It was no surprise therefore that energy sources coal and nuclear were the object of two of the EU's three founding treaties: for the Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the Atomic Energy Community in 1957. Yet energy policy per se did not feature in the Rome treaty. Each country is free to decide its own energy mix and the structure of its national energy market. Nowhere is this clearer than in the role ascribed to nuclear energy in electricity production across Europe. In some countries nuclear has being phased out. In others it is a central source of generation as in France, but also to a lesser degree in countries like the UK, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia. Moreover, individual member states also offer a range of local incentives to support electricity from renewable sources and its integration into the national transmission grid.
