French MP Dominique Voynet, co-founder of The Greens party, former environment minister and long-time outspoken opponent of nuclear power, has been officially appointed to the High Committee for Transparency and Information on Nuclear Safety (HCTISN).
Voynet’s appointment on March 19 to the French national committee focused on public access to nuclear safety information that served as a forum for discussion on related issues has caused controversy in France.
Many of those responsible for the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Energy Independence have questioned the move.
In a letter to President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, Antoine Armand, MP for French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party, former economy minister in the Barnier government and rapporteur for the Commission, along with Raphaël Schellenberger, independent MP and former president of the same Commission, have voiced their opposition.
They said the appointment of The Greens anti-nuclear activist Voynet was “incomprehensible and worrying, while these institutions must keep their independence and a great serenity in their functioning”.
Her hearing before the Commission of Inquiry on Energy Sovereignty in February 2023 “confirmed her ideological and dogmatic position in the face of national representation”, Armand and Schellenberger wrote.
“Worse still, last December, she declared that she would have liked to sabotage French nuclear power,” they added.
“We must not return to decades of militant and irrational approaches, which have only had the effect of weakening our nuclear industry and slowing down a pragmatic and ambitious ecological transition.
“This is why we solemnly ask you to reconsider this appointment, in order to ensure that the HCTISN can completely fulfil its mission, based on scientific facts and the expertise of impartial and competent members,” the pair concluded.
🔴 NUCLÉAIRE | Nous apprenons avec stupéfaction la nomination de Dominique Voynet comme membre du HCTISN.
Honnêtement, c'est intolérable. Rien qu'en décembre dernier, elle disait vouloir saborder le nucléaire français.
Avec @RSCactu nous écrivons à la présidente de l'Assemblée. pic.twitter.com/MnzWgjOHnE
— Antoine Armand (@antoine_armand) March 19, 2025
Jean-Philippe Tanguy, MP for the National Rally, also wrote a letter on X on March 19 to Braun-Pivet, similarly calling the move “incomprehensible” because she had “told the press in the past she consciously and deliberately sabotage the proliferation of nuclear energy in France”.
On the same day, David Lisnard, Mayor of Cannes said on X: “Dominique Voynet boasted of having sabotaged French nuclear power. France and the French people have paid the consequences on every level, including on their bills.
“This is at the very least a provocation, at worst — and probably — harmful, bringing the wolf back into the sheepfold that it had decimated.”
Voynet played a pivotal role in the closing down of the Superphénix nuclear power station, the largest breeder reactor ever built.
Superphénix was commissioned in 1985 but was shut down in 1998, being a target of anti-nuclear activists with Greens and anarchist convictions, who executed a rocket attack against the plant during its construction.
In a parliamentary commission of inquiry in 1998, Voynet, thenn serving as a minister, said Superphénix reflected the “delusion of grandeur” and “a poor appreciation of the country’s electricity needs”, criticising a “political class that was bathed in nuclear euphoria”.
She was the national spokesperson for The Greens party from 1992 to 1997 and national secretary from 2001 to 2003.
In her career, she served as an MEP and was The Greens’ candidate for the Élysée Palace twice. Later, she was elected to the French parliament and became environment minister in the then-prime minister Lionel Jospin’s government (1997–2001).
She also served as senator and as mayor and became director of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Mayotte in 2019 until her retirement in 2021.
Voynet only recently made a comeback into the French parliament, with the parliamentary elections of July 2024.
Detractors of Voynet shared video’s of her online where she bragged how she had “scuttled” French nuclear power in Brussels, earning her the nickname as the “gravedigger of nuclear power”.
🔴ALERTE INFO
Dominique Voynet vient d'être nommée au HCTISN : Haut Comité pour la Transparence et l'Information sur la Sécurité Nucléaire.
En 1997-2001, elle expliquait comment elle avait sabordé le nucléaire français à Bruxelles.pic.twitter.com/Vxgc6h3NjK
— Jon De Lorraine (@jon_delorraine) March 19, 2025
In 1995, in her programme for the presidential election, she had pleaded for a “gradual phase-out of nuclear power” in favour of “energy savings and new energies”.
That policy has been executed by Germany, which closed down its last nuclear power plants in 2023, and has been struggling with sky-high electricity bills and three years of economic recession since.
Conversely, during a summit in February, Macron was able to promise abundant energy provided by nuclear power in a bid to attract AI centres to France.
This tech offensive could keep France ahead of the curve, experts have said, and ensure economic growth for the future.
At the same time, Germany has been experiencing slowing growth and, perhaps ironically, has relied on imported French nuclear-generated electricity to keep the lights on.
A leaked 2022 letter from German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck to France’s then-energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has revealed that Germany’s nuclear phase-out depended on support from French nuclear power.
It undermines the German Greens’ insistence that nuclear power is… pic.twitter.com/cyXr20OZdl
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 28, 2024
