Industrial policy

A multi-billion-euro deal to build two nuclear reactors in southern Czechia, frozen by a Brno court after South Korea’s KHNP outbid EDF, is having significant political consequences. Czech ministers have accused the French state-owned energy company of meddling in their domestic politics in an election year; the involvement as an EU arbiter of Stéphane Séjourné, France’s commissioner in Brussels, has obliged him to deny accusations of national bias. The prospect of an escalating row with Prague has led even some officials in Paris to think the affair might have gone too far, and that EDF might end up being asked to rein itself in.