Five board members of French state-controlled utility EDF are petitioning to have the courts annul last month’s board decision to push ahead with the controversial Hinkley Point power project near Burnham-On-Sea.
The board voted 10 to 7 in favour of the £18bn project late last month to build two reactors with one board member resigning in protest against EDF’s strategy.
Five rebels on the board, all of whom represent the EDF unions, said on Wednesday that the decision should be invalidated because Jean-Bernard Lévy, the chief executive, did not tell them that the UK government planned to delay its decision on the plant.
They argue that this was key information that could have influenced the voting by some administrators.
“Some board members discovered they did not benefit from the same level of information as the CEO and government representative,” the CGT, CFE-CGC and FO unions said in a statement. The CFDT union did not sign the statement.
Shortly after the board meeting, the UK announced that it had postponed its final decision until early autumn to allow time for further review.
Law firm Alain Levy, which represents the five union board members, said on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint with the Paris commercial court, adding that the case would be heard on September 5th. EDF declined to comment.
EDF has admitted that Jean-Bernard Lévy knew that a signing ceremony scheduled for the project site on the day after the board meeting had been pushed back by the UK. But the company insists that Mr Lévy did not know that a full review would take place.
“EDF and its chairman had no knowledge of the intention of the British government to conduct a further review of the Hinkley Point project,” the company said in a statement earlier this month.
