MEPs block funds in nuclear protest

Date: 02/07/1998

By Myles Neligan

THE European Parliament has blocked the EU's annual 15-million-ecu contribution to the Korean Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), setting the scene for a diplomatic row with the US and Japan.

The international body was set up in 1995 to persuade the volatile state of North Korea to refrain from developing weapons-convertible nuclear power plants.

European Commission officials are now bracing themselves for a hostile reaction from Washington and Tokyo, which have recently been putting pressure on the Union to increase its annual contributions.

The Parliament's move is likely to aggravate the already serious financial crisis facing the 4.2-billion-ecu KEDO initiative, caused largely by a reduction in South Korea's contributions following last year's Asian economic collapse.

Representatives of the organisation's four main partners - South Korea, the US, Japan and the EU - met in Brussels this week to discuss ways of making up a 450-million-ecu funding shortfall, but failed to come up with a solution. Officials said that none of the four were willing to increase their share of the financial burden.

The deadline for the Union to make its payment for 1998 passed on Tuesday (30 June), which means it is now technically in arrears.

The Parliament's budget committee voted unanimously last week to block the EU's annual contribution in protest at the Commission's failure to allow MEPs a bigger say in matters relating to nuclear power. The 1957 Euratom Treaty, which has never been revised, gives the Commission exclusive competence in this area.

“Euratom is the most undemocratic of all the EU treaties,” said Dutch Liberal MEP and budget committee rapporteur Laurens Jan Brinkhorst. “This may have been appropriate 40 years ago, but it is no longer justifiable today.”

Parliamentary sources said the budget committee's move was widely supported by other MEPs, including those on the institution's energy and research committee.

Negotiations are now under way between the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council of Ministers to find a mutually acceptable way out of the impasse.

MEPs have been pushing for a full revision of the Euratom Treaty for the past two years, and now want the other EU institutions to give a firm undertaking that they will reform the treaty in line with the power-sharing arrangements drawn up under the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties.

“The money remains in the budgetary reserve pending a new inter-institutional agreement,” said Brinkhorst.

However, diplomats say that while a face-saving solution to the current dilemma will probably be found, EU governments are highly unlikely to agree to a full revision of the Euratom Treaty.

The Union's most influential member states, which are also those with the most developed nuclear industries, are expected strongly to resist parliamentary demands for joint decision-making powers over nuclear energy policy.

Energy Commissioner Christos Papoutsis' staff expressed regret at the latest development, while stressing that Papoutsis had attempted to remedy the imbalance of EU power in the field of nuclear energy by voluntarily consulting MEPs over all major decisions.

The row over the Union's KEDO contributions comes at a time of heightened tension on the Korean peninsula, following the discovery last week of a North Korean submarine on a spying mission in South Korean waters.