Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-15-Speech-3-225"
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"en.20000315.7.3-225"2
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".
Mr President, Article 101 of the Euratom Treaty provides the legal basis for international nuclear agreements, as is the case with the European Atomic Energy Community’s accession agreement to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation or KEDO.
This article provides that agreements or contracts with third countries shall be negotiated by the Commission in accordance with the directives of the Council, and are to be concluded by the Commission with the approval of the Council, which shall act by a qualified majority. It is for the Council to respect and apply the relevant provisions of the Euratom Treaty, which does not provide for the Parliament to be consulted on these matters, which is how the Treaties stand.
You will recall that as an institution, the Council is not empowered to make any amendments to the Treaty, which is quite natural, as questions of this kind can normally only be raised at an Intergovernmental Conference. In my role as chairman of the preparatory group for the ICG, I will make sure to take account of this request regarding the ICG.
Turning to your questions about the nuclear power stations in Ukraine, whose names I find rather difficult to read – Khmelnitsky and Rivne – may I remind you that is it for the Commission to carry out technical assessments of these nuclear power stations so as to determine what maintenance is required, or even closure. In March 1994, the Council approved a decision authorising the Commission to contract Euratom loans of up to EUR 1 100 million in order to contribute to the financing required for improving the degree of efficiency and safety of nuclear power stations in certain non-member countries.
However, no non-member country has made use of this facility to date. Furthermore, the legal basis for this is the Euratom Treaty, so that there is once again no provision for consulting the European Parliament. To sum up, your questions raise some sensitive problems which, as we know, have been discussed in this House in recent years in the context of increasing its powers, and Parliament has been using its budgetary authority as a legitimate source of pressure.
As regards the specific instance of KEDO, let me remind you that in 1998 Parliament blocked the funds for that year, and it was only possible to overcome this problem by means of a compromise with the Commission, in which the Commission undertook to inform Parliament, at the beginning of each year, about Euratom agreements being negotiated, so that Parliament could consider them."@en1
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