Green outrage over de Palacio nuclear plan

Date: 07/11/02

By Karen Carstens

GREEN MEPs and environmental groups have attacked the European Commission over its massive new nuclear energy programme unveiled yesterday (6 November).

'This is unacceptable and downright scandalous,' said German MEP Hiltrud Breyer, who questioned the package put forward by 'pro-nuclear' Transport and Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio.

'The Commission's proposals on nuclear safety are merely a 'survival package' for the atomic industry and a PR smokescreen to con the public,' she added.Friends of the Earth Europe said the package, the largest single compilation of nuclear legislation in more than a decade, 'represents a coordinated effort to prepare the ground for the further development of atomic power in an enlarged EU'.

'The Commission's nuclear package must be suspended,' the organisation's Europe director, Martin Rocholl, said. 'The legal basis for the measures, in the shape of the Euratom Treaty, has been eroded by the passage of time and by the sea change in European opinion.'

But the Commission emphasised the proposals' focus on safety. They cover power station decommissioning; radioactive waste management; trade in nuclear materials with Russia and reactor safety.

'It is our responsibility to ensure a common approach to nuclear safety and waste management. European citizens would never forgive us for inaction,' de Palacio said.

The Euratom Treaty provides for safeguards and inspections of nuclear power plants. De Palacio said it was crucial that 'complementary measures' covered both member states and the countries vying to join the Union.

A related measure was also agreed by the Commission yesterday to increase funding for the so-called Euratom loan facility from €4,000 million to €6,000 million. Established in 1977 to help finance nuclear power stations, the lending instrument was extended in 1994 to third countries, including candidate states, where ageing nuclear reactors were in dire need of repair.

However, the Green MEPs and environmental groups, argued that Commission investments in cleaner renewable energy sources are paltry by comparison. Arjette Stevens of Greenpeace International said: 'The Commission must come clean. Instead of planning for the revival of a dying industry it should engage its considerable resources to research, develop and promote a 100% clean renewable energy future for an enlarged EU.'

MEP Breyer, meanwhile, said the Greens would push for abandoning the Euratom Treaty within the Convention on the future of Europe.

Unlike the 1952 European Coal and Steel Treaty, which expired earlier this year on its 50th anniversary, the Euratom Treaty has no expiry date.

Euratom is the shortened form for the treaty to establish the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC), signed in Rome in 1957 at the same time as the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community. While the latter has often been updated, the Euratom Treaty has remained largely unchanged.

Rocholl said: 'Radical reform of the treaty must be the top priority. The Commission should focus on developing a common framework for a sustainable EU energy strategy. If Euratom stays unchanged, then the risk of damaging public confidence in the new constitution of Europe is high.'

He agreed with Breyer that the Convention 'represents a unique opportunity to reform Euratom and to create a new framework for a sustainable European energy strategy'.

Green MEPs and environmental groups have attacked the European Commission over its massive new nuclear energy programme, unveiled on 6 November 2002.