alt Hacker NewsAccording to Wikipedia, PreussenElektra was a subsidiary of VEBA, a state owned energy company. You have to cite your sources here because I don't want to have to rebut made-up stuff.
I do note that you have changed your argument from "plants were built mostly by private sector" to "it wasn't fully state controlled enterprises in the west". Closer to the truth, but still incorrect.
I stand corrected. VEBA was state owned at that time. On the other hand RWE was 50/50 private-municipality owned in the same period.
Still, no CFDs were given to them. So it's not about state reducing subsidies. Nor was it about environment regulations.
The high costs of recent western projects are more related to depleted supply chain and poor designs of the plants. We'll get a chance soon to observe how Canada and Korea will build in Europe. Both have much better supply chain and both want to build (Czechia- apr and Romania -candu). If both will have the same cost blows as flamanville then it's clearly related to EU itself. If not- then the problem was EDF incompetence specifically here and Westinghouse incompetence in US