Description
This paper examines the European Commission’s role in legitimizing nuclear energy within the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. While the inclusion of nuclear energy in 2022 was officially justified through scientific assessments and climate goals, it also reflected a deeper hegemonic struggle among competing state, corporate, and civil society actors. Drawing on a neo-Gramscian perspective combined with schematic narrative analysis, the study conceptualizes the Commission as a political entrepreneur and organic intellectual that constructs legitimacy through narrative and epistemic authority. The Commission’s official discourse has been examined to trace how scientific discourse and sustainability narratives were strategically fused to generate consent and neutralize dissent. By invoking narratives such as “Europe’s unity through crises” and “nuclear as indispensable for climate neutrality,” the Commission has positioned nuclear energy as a symbol of European technological leadership and integration, bridging the interests of pro-nuclear member states (France, Eastern Europe) and capital fractions (EDF, Orano, BlackRock) against anti-nuclear coalitions (Germany, Austria, environmental NGOs). The findings reveal that the taxonomy decision was not merely technocratic but a site of hegemonic articulation, shaping the EU’s energy transition trajectory. The paper contributes to debates on hegemonic legitimation and the political economy of green transition, highlighting how the EU’s regulatory framework functions as a terrain of contestation rather than neutral governance.
Keywords: EU Taxonomy, nuclear energy, European Commission, neo-Gramscian, hegemony, schematic narrative analysis
