The Caisse des Dépôts considers it “logical” to finance new nuclear power plants with the Livret A

It would be “logical” to finance new nuclear power plants with the savings that the French place in their Livret A accounts, said Eric Lombard, the general director of the Caisse des Dépôts (CDC) this Wednesday. “The proposal to finance this nuclear power plant program with Livret A funds is on the table, it would be logical because it is an important element of the decarbonization of our economy,” said the latter, guest of the program Ecorama broadcast on the Boursorama website. The government is carrying out a program for six new EPR reactors, estimated at 51.7 billion euros.

“If we finance, for example, a third of the nuclear program, it will represent a few billion euros per year (...), it is something which is entirely absorbable by the savings of the French,” continued Éric Lombard , recalling that his “first priority” remained social housing. The sums deposited in Livrets A and Livrets de développement durable et solidaire (LDDS) are 59.5% managed by the Caisse des Dépôts, and intended mainly to finance social housing. The remaining 40.5% is managed by banks, and must be mainly dedicated to bank loans to SMEs.

These two savings accounts attracted nearly 40 billion euros in deposits last year and totaled 571.5 billion in outstandings at the end of February. The Director General also mentioned the role of the “Caisse” in financing armaments, via its role as shareholder “of large companies which have an armament dimension in their activity”. “We probably need to go further, particularly to finance the industrial fabric of SMEs and mid-sized companies,” he added, referring to the role of banks, institutional investors and even insurance companies and not that of regulated savings in this area.

The direction of Livret A towards the defense industry, desired by the Senate, is not favored by Bercy either, but on February 23 the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire launched the idea of ​​creating a European savings product responsible, among other things, for “financing our defense effort”. Éric Lombard also affirmed that this industry was “completely compliant” with environmental, societal or governance (ESG) criteria, “since we clearly see that national defense is also the defense of our democracy and of our environmental trajectory.