Recommendation from the Commission to the Council on the renewal of the Agreement between the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO)

The Euratom Community has been a full member of the Korean Peninsula Energy Organisation (KEDO) since 1997. The main objective of KEDO was the provision of two nuclear light water reactors to the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea - North Korea), as part of international non-proliferation efforts on the Korean Peninsula.

As a result of the DPRK’s failure to implement its non-proliferation obligations, the operative activities of KEDO were terminated and the 12 year old secretariat closed on 31 May 2007. In spite of this KEDO's Executive Board decided not to terminate the organisation immediately, but to maintain it in the form of an empty shell (as a pure skeleton, with a secretariat employed on a temporary basis) in order to allow it to defend its financial and legal interest and those of its four members represented in the Executive Board (Euratom, Japan, South Korea and the USA).

Initially it was estimated that a final settlement of these legal and financial issues could be achieved by 31 May 2012. Therefore the Community’s membership was to last until that date under the latest Euratom-KEDO Agreement. However since KEDO needs more time to finalise its outstanding issues, continued protection of the Community interests requires conclusion of a new Agreement between Euratom and KEDO. To that end, the Commission submitted to the Council on 22 March 2012 a Recommendation for a Council Decision authorising the Commission to negotiate the renewal of the Euratom-KEDO Agreement. The Council issued the negotiating directives on 2 May 2012.

On the basis of the text proposed by the Commission services, following the Council's negotiating directives, an ad referendum agreement has now been reached with KEDO on the attached text for renewal of the Agreement between the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO). In the opinion of the Commission services, this text includes all the negotiating directives. The Commission therefore recommends to the Council to approve the renewal of the Agreement.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)760: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:760:FIN

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