France is being fined 500 million Euros by the EU because it didn’t meet its ‘renewable energy’ goals in 2020.
Yet the CO2 intensiveness of France’s electrical generation is running about 121gCO2/kWh, while Germany is at 647gCO2/kWh. Apparently, nuclear doesn’t count as ‘renewable’ by EU standards. (The numbers would have surely been even more favorable to France in 2020 than those based on this 2022 snapshot, given that so many French nuclear plants are down for maintenance at the present time)
While I would love to see France leave the EU [and to be honest, any country leave the EU] I do not think that that this is going to trigger it. First, the EU exemplifies wasteful and intrusive bureaucracy. Both of which are hallmarks of French governance. And the ability to ignore factual details like the gCO2/kWH based on politically biased interpretations are also something shared by the EU and France.
1) There are a bunch of reasons that people came to North America [albeit Canada is as European top-down cultured as the EU]. This is but one of them.
2) There will be no real changes there until either guillotine manufacturing becomes a cottage industry, or until food, water, etc. start getting scarce in EU urban areas.
Subotai Bahadur
Somewhat related:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1701362/brussels-belgium-uk-nuclear-deterrent-nato-isostatic-press
IIRC France was one of the countries that Peter Zeihan identified as likely to survive the coming Global Disorder (as opposed to the Cold War era Global Order and its zombie continuation for the last few decades) because it is largely self-sufficient in resources, has a reasonably functional military, and retains fairly close ties with useful remnants of its colonial empire. On the other hand, it benefits from the EU both in terms of a close binding with Germany which limits the German’s freedom of action and by receiving subsidies for agricultural production (this was a major reason why Britain stayed out of the EU for so long as Britain imports lots of food but primarily from the Commonwealth countries). Overall, France probably has more to gain from staying in the EU than leaving. I’d actually pick Italy to bolt first, especially if the newly nationalist Italians start to reform alliances with the Southern and Eastern European states like Hungary and Romania that are on the outs with Brussels. Maybe Vienna will rise again?
Well seeing that Brexit has destroyed the UK’s economy, other countries may be less likely to leave the EU, with that example clearly showing the results of leaving the largest trading block on the planet.
Systematically starving the economy of energy couldn’t possibly have any negative consequences. What will the countries still hobbled by the EU blame?
By the time the snow melts next spring, a little global warming might not sound so bad to the survivors. Presumably, the rest of the EU will be happy to freeze in the dark to avoid the taint of using any of that nasty French power.