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Emmanuel Macron. Thank you very much.

Heads of state and government, President of the European Commission,

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ministers, ambassadors.

Heads of international governments from industry, so all protocols respected, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

it is a great honor for France to host here in Paris today this summit international summit on nuclear energy. The reason we are here.

Madam President, as representatives of governments, scientists, people from industry and civil society,

it is because we all share a very simple belief we need nuclear energy because it is a drive of progress,

prosperity and independence.

This summit is taking place, of course, in a very specific context,

because nuclear today is associated with an ongoing conflict in Iran.

And in Middle East, it's also because this summit is taking place 15 years to the day after the Fukushima disaster and on behalf of all of you,

I have a fraternal thought for the grieving Japanese people, the families.

The displaced people and the heroic workers and rescue workers and engineers who made huge sacrifices to avoid the worst. 15 years, the world has changed.

Nothing will erase this pain,

but it means that we have to be permanently focused on safety, vigilance and attentions. Since 2011, lessons have been learned.

The strictest standards and inspections have been reinforced and technology involved so we can now say that the nuclear energy is safe because of those standards and those are now being reinforced.

But it is a challenge, as we know from the human costs that resulted around the world and here in Europe.

Our reactors have been subjected to some of the strictest inspections in the world,

and huge investments have been made to modernize, innovate and transform.

And in this area, the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I thank you,

Director General and your staff for this is playing a key role in the area of safety and security too.

We have improved, and I thank those responsible too, but there can be no civil nuclear energy without these guarantees,

and it's all of this that has been promoted by.

Our country, these ideas backed up by science,

that's what's enabled us to move forward and come here today with a new and full confidence in nuclear energy thanks to what went before and the work done by our safety bodies and investors and scientists and also thanks to the work done by the agency.

As I said just now,

you have performed an outstanding task to prevent proliferation in your interaction with Iran and also to protect the integrity of Europe. Thank you, Director General.

How can we fail to think of and have full solidarity with our Ukrainian friends,

you know the agencies. Has been involved since 2022 in September.

The power plant at Savari illegally occupied by Russia, leading to several risks.

The international community react in order to preserve your territorial sovereignty,

but also nuclear safety.

So this reminds us quite clearly that when we talk about nuclear energy.

The ethical question is still there and we need to turn to open minded science to guide us what we've been able to build thanks to our safety authorities as national treasure and what we have been able to build internationally with the support of the UN bodies in particular the I.

Needs to be protected and preserved and I restate this at a time when we have rather hasty judgments that want to do away with this obsolete system that's wrong when we talk about nuclear obvious and given this context what happened 15 years ago,

the complexity and.

Geopolitical sensitivity subjects and makes it clear that nonetheless nuclear is a driver of prosperity because it is a source of power generation which enables us to reconcile three targets,

three objectives that are at the heart of all our ambitions.

There are people here from all over the world.

And I can tell you that we want competitiveness and therefore power that is generated as efficiently as possible,

creating jobs.

We want to solve the problems that the planet have bring down CO2 emissions and we want to be more independent.

We can see in today's geopolitical context when we are over dependent on.

Hydrocarbons this could be a form of pressure, even destabilization,

and I would like to thank the International Energy Agency and G7 for the good work they have done in order to bring down the cost of fossil fuels.

So nuclear energy means that we can satisfy all those needs.

Means large scale competitive and controllable energy generation in our generation mix,

France in 2022 decided to go for both nuclear and renewables because nuclear.

Means that we can be more in charge, more adjust the generations,

and it is decarbonized or enhances decarbonisation,

enables us to go for clean energy, nuclear generated. On France means independence for France.

Wherever we supply nuclear powered energy, we are.

This means that we can have electric mobility with nationally produced energy,

which means we are more independent.

And we are protected from global shocks and by competitive and decarbons we are more in control,

as you said,

and it means we can satisfy our needs for electrification which is necessary for decarbonation.

It means we can also meet the needs of our new technologies.

That consume so much electrical power, and I say all this because this is one of the dilemmas facing them.

We all want to have quantum computing and we want to be competitive as well and we want to.

Meet the needs of our economies,

but all around the world we want to have computing power with energy that is not yet available with fossil fuel.

If we drill and drill and drill, we won't solve that problem.

Last year in France we exported 90 terawatt hours,

90 kilowatt hours.

So this means that it is possible for us to open data centers and computing facilities and really face up to the needs of IAA with adjustable and nuclear energy efficient power.

So this is what nuclear can do for us.

We will not be able to meet our decarbonisation targets.

Carbon neutrality in 2050 and create jobs without having this energy source.

This is what I wanted to stress because this is what we have in the energy mix in Europe as well and around the world as well.

Nuclear is key to reconciling both independence,

energy decarbonisation and carbon neutrality by 2050, and competitiveness, which means jobs.

French nuclear makes it possible we have modernized and installed most of the last 15 years with investment projects that we have in this industry and all of this means that our capabilities and export.

We have plans for EPR 2 nuclear reactors and in a couple of days from now we will have our nuclear power policy which will mean we will be able to implement.

The multi-year energy plan approved on the 12th of February.

That is our choice, and this is how all together we can move forward.

So on this basis we can say the time has come for action if we agree on this analysis. We need to act.

Let me explain what we need to do. We have power stations that work around.

We have to make sure that stays the way. 10% of output comes from nuclear. We have about 450 power stations.

Our first aim is to continue to improve their operation,

make them safer and more secure, and continue to invest.

That has been France's program for the past 15 years.

That is the right choice and we must continue.

In addition to operating power stations, there are 70 in the building phase and 115 other projects in the design stage,

so we need to invest so as to improve performance and safety.

The second thing we need to do is to continue to ramp up and therefore standardize. This is.

Vital if we want to be more competitive in this industry standards across countries so that we can have the same type of reactors in different countries.

I'm thinking so that we can perhaps have the same sort of reactor elsewhere.

So with this standardization, it means we don't have to repeat prototyping.

This is what we have found from French experience.

We cannot be profitable and effective, cost effective if we keep repeating protosubs standardization across the countries so that we can build capacity related standards and standardize across energy specialists and industries and countries so that we can reduce costs and deadlines,

and if we do that, then nuclear energy will meet the needs of the transition.

So to do this safety authorities have to continue what they've been doing so that we can have standardized safety standards,

but in addition to norms their authorization inspections and interpretation of standards and the French. We need to cooperate more.

Some sectors have been able to do it, to look at the aviation industry,

historically it has been able to produce standards and develop this hugely precious. Cooperation. Then there's funding.

We need to better fund these projects whether it's conventional or innovative nuclear energy,

and I say that because 5 or 6 years ago we had made sure that nothing could finance the nuclear energy,

especially renew.

We have made sure that our banks, our insurance companies could never fund nuclear projects.

We couldn't agree, so there was no technological neutrality.

So we've made a lot of progress since then.

We were very bad in the past, but confidence has returned.

Science is now more clear sighted, as I said without nuclear energy, we can't be.

We now have to re-mobilize funding in France with France 2030. We've done that.

That is a driver of our program to produce tomato reactors and in recent years we have put in our rules,

the European Investment Bank has confirmed its support for nuclear energy via a number of projects,

for example, €400 million for the extension of the Orana enrichment plant. That's just the first step.

We want to go even faster and further,

so we need to continue to mobilize this funding and continue to draw on private funding,

and here I have to say.

I am delighted to see that major international private investment funds are moving into the area,

and I think we need to wake up to make sure that banks and insurance companies continue to do so.

We can't forget what happened a few months ago in the UK. It is a wonderful opportunity. The EDF's project was funded.

To a large extent by Anglo-Saxon investment funds because of our rules, that is difficult for us here,

so collectively we need to wake up and see the need for clearer rules.

So I would call on all stakeholders, private and public debt,

to do their part to bring in these investments, and I commend the commitments taken in the.

Financial Institutions for this, I would also turn to private banks and investment funds and venture capital for the higher risk projects or the more conventional plans,

as was done extremely well in the UK, and I think that here in Europe we have to go even one step further.

For years now, nuclear energy is better integrated into European legislation and strategy.

I'd like to thank you, dear Ursula, for that. Last week there was the. Regulation on industrial accelerated.

This is a major step forward leading to the technology neutrality we need.

I also commend the partial inclusion of nuclear in the European investment technology. It's an important step.

We need to go further by including all the cycle in this technological neutrality,

from fuel production to reprocessing.

Upstream and downstream are excluded today, so we don't have full technology neutrality,

so we cannot have fully effective funding.

We need to move towards this technological neutrality, as I said, so state support has to be fully consolidated into the European framework,

and we need this for all nuclear projects, whether it's new nuclear SMRs. Along with renewables.

We need new major projects for interconnection and here we need Europe.

We need an IPC, important project common European interest for nuclear,

as we were able to do with hydrogen and batteries.

The same sort of thing needs to be done with these IPCEIs to fund the nuclear industry.

In particular SMRs, small modular reactors,

they are an opportunity for us in Europe to invent and explore new practices. There's extremely tough competition.

Our American, Canadian, Chinese friends are all on the cutting edge of that technology,

so Europeans have to keep up with them.

And with France 2030, we are trying to. We have the support for that. In fact, I'm delighted to announce today.

Two projects Kalogina and Jimmy, which are about rolling out heat producing reactors,

they will have additional funding and then the CDF's new art project once again all of this will be consolidated.

That's part of our cutting edge technology and there are many other closed cycle or other projects. These projects exist. They need to be ramped up. We need to include an IPC. Then there are the grids.

Nuclear energy has to help us build this Europe of energy and grids with real cross border connections and improving the level of quality of existing European grids,

simply because Energy is within the national remit.

It wasn't part of the common market,

and so our power grids are in a very, very different situation.

France is fully integrated with our highly centralized approach, as has always been the case.

Everything is consolidated and integrated, which is good, but there are other countries. F.

There are several grids,

and there's a real lack of good interconnection between our countries and what we need in order to take forward nuclear so that it will enable us to reconcile certainty and competitiveness.

What we need is a A European market and free movement of decarbons electrons, as with people and capital,

we have to make sure that these DA decarbonised electrons can be produced with offshore wind off the coast of Belgium or solar in Greece or nuclear. It doesn't matter.

The important thing is that they can all circulate freely.

So as to feed into our mix, that's vital for Europe and something that we're looking at with Europe,

not just Europe, but in particular Germany and Poland.

Then we need more international cooperation, in particular for fuel production and cycle closure.

A little earlier, some activists were asking us about our dependency on. Russia, that's true for uranium.

We have to remember that's 40% of global production there are here.

However, many countries represented Mongolia,

Kazakhstan that they produce uranium they've opened up along with Uzbekistan, Australia, Canada.

They all have uranium reserves and there has to be international cooperation to advance on that front to diversify our supply chain quite clearly and secure our uranium.

Supplies so as to depend less on political vicissitudes.

We should also continue to invest and innovate to enrich more and France with its G7 partners has committed to increase its uranium enrichment capabilities. There's the Renault extension.

There will be 30% more, and that will reinforce the energy.

Western countries, there will be other projects coming through,

and it's vital to make sure that these enrichment projects are backed by international cooperation.

Iran is working with the US Department of State, and that's an excellent illustration.

So we need to continue working on closed cycles so that we use less natural uranium. And eventually leave it behind.

So enrichment has to be at the heart of our innovative projects, and that is vital too.

We must continue with this cooperation with Japan and South Korea that are key in this area,

and European countries want to maintain this link, so that's a vital more international cooperation,

diversification of our supplies, and continue to work on. Uranium enrichment and closed cycle. Then there's the supply chain itself. We have many different partnerships.

The European Nuclear Alliance has been a major step forward in recent years, and I'd like to thank those who are behind that.

There is competition, of course between major industrial operators, but basically we must consolidate. The European industrial landscape.

We need standardization and we need a European supply chain if we want to drive up jobs in Europe, in the nuclear industry, if we want to be more competitive,

and if we want to shape and create the supply chain of subcontractors,

which leads me on to the next area training. This is only possible.

I have said is only possible if we get more and more people into nuclear industries.

We have to recruit young people, offering them job like to thank all of those in the industry,

but we need to have better cooperation bringing younger people, train them and show that the nuclear industry. For the future.

We have 250,000 high qualified jobs in 900,000 in Europe according to to to 1.4 million over the next few years in Europe.

100,000 people that we have to hire at the very least in which means that for all young people today remember that there are jobs in industries and in the future will be career prospects. Different today with outstanding career prospects.

So we need to cooperate today, bring in these people, these young people, train them,

build career paths in nuclear industries whether our major industrial champions or their partners.

And the last thing we need to work very hard is R&D.

We need to stay on the cutting edge of.

Technology fund projects for safety, security, closed cycle,

and SMRs because all of this must drive our public and public-private initiatives.

We are also commend the people who are behind the projecting.

Raises high hopes generating progress, we need to maintain this effort.

We need to continue to train the best researchers in the area.

So I thank the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission for what they are doing and there's also the CRS and our academia in France,

Europe, around the world, all focusing on this area.

Again, I have to say that to move forward in the nuclear we need free,

open science as we defended last year when President Manders went to the Sorbonne talking about the future for Science project and this brings me back to what I said. It's always about the ethics.

Of nuclear and that needs to be informed by science and science has to be aware of government industrial choices,

but science has to be open and accessible for our citizens so as to enable controversies leading sometimes to the closure,

termination of.

In the light of science if science is free and open,

it guarantees technological progress that supports and serves mankind.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are some of my beliefs today I wanted to share,

and I think these are the efforts we need to make for the nuclear industry in the world,

and particularly in Europe.

In conclusion, I'd like to thank you for being here today.

Years ago we were in the middle of a dramatic and moving crisis. We have moved on from that.

We've forgotten nothing, of course, and as I say, we have a special thought for our Japanese friends today,

but looking back at how far we have come and looking at the nuclear industry today,

we can see it is genuinely a future oriented project for the futures of our societies and countries.

Thank you. Yes. President.