French industry and energy
minister Eric Besson Tuesday said that Alexandre de Juniac's application to
take the helm of French state-controlled nuclear engineering firm Areva
hadn't been "validated" by the government, in an interview with
French radio Radio Classique.
A special ethics committee is to meet Wednesday, at de Juniac's request, to
look into potential conflict of interests' issues for de Juniac to become Areva's
new chief executive officer.
Areva's
current CEO Anne Lauvergeon's mandate is due to expire in June.
De Juniac is currently French finance minister Christine Lagarde's chief of
staff, and as such, has handled Areva's
divestiture of its transmission and distribution unit at the end of last year,
as well as its EUR900 million capital increase which has been recently
announced.
De Juniac is "of great quality," Besson said and he noted that de
Juniac's seeking the ethics committee's advice was "a personal
decision" and that it was up to the committee to say if there were any
conflict of interests. Others too are fully qualified to take the job, Besson
said, though he declined to elaborate.
"My priority is to organize the French nuclear industry...so that it
performs better than it used to," Besson added.
Lauvergeon said last week she wanted to keep her job.