"Rethinking Nuclear Integration. Euratom, Italy and France and the Nuclear Business (1957-1973)"

At the crossroads of the history of European integration, the history of technology and business history, this paper focuses on the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). According to its founding Treaty (1957), its main goal was to build a strong nuclear European industry, capable of competing with foreign powers on the international nuclear market. However, Euratom did not achieve this aim. A few years after its creation, Euratom faced a crisis (1965), which later developed into a phase of stagnation (1967-69). In the following years, Euratom focused on nuclear research such as fusion, putting aside the ambition to create an industrial policy. What factors prevented the development of a European nuclear industrial policy? This study offers an original contribution to scholarship: business scholars often overlooked Euratom’s industrial ambitions. Based on archival research, this study explores the complex relationship between French and Italian actors operating in the nuclear sector (electricity utilities, state-owned enterprises, atomic commissions, and state actors) and Euratom policymakers from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. By decentring the nation-state, this paper investigates the strategies of Italian and French companies, as well as atomic commissions, for developing nuclear technology, while also considering the state policies. It problematised them by connecting with the debates that took place in Euratom for establishing a European industrial nuclear policy. This study identifies the political, economic and industrial difficulties in creating a unified European action in the nuclear sector. It reveals that nuclear integration implied far more than merely consolidating industries within a specific sector and should necessitate multiple layers of integration upstream. This crucial connection enables us to rethink nuclear integration via Euratom: By doing so, it challenges the traditional belittling of the Euratom experience, often labelled as a failure.