Euratom and European nuclear industry, from the Rome Treaty to the relaunching of the 1980s

Abstract

The historical experience of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), which was founded in 1957 with the aim to support the emerging European nuclear industry and whose Treaty is still in force, is a largely neglected subject in the history of European integration. This article deals with the main steps of its development, with specific attention to its creation in the 1950s and its attempted relaunch in the early 1980s, as case-studies in common policies in strategic industries. The experience of Euratom may also frame historically the present policy of the EU Commission, which ha inserted nuclear technologies among the “green taxonomy” of the Green Deal launched in 2019.