Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-06-Speech-3-026"
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".
Mr President, firstly it is being demonstrated here that there are no double standards. In other words, what we are doing is converting into Community law – or making a proposal that they become Community law – the rules and standards which, in the negotiations, it has been agreed to require of the candidate countries. We have demanded that the candidate countries comply with them and what we are going to do is simply demand that the current countries of the Union do the same.
With regard to the question of the Swedish example, I am not going to insist on the issue of joint storage. I have explained what our approach is. With regard to Denmark, this is a country which does have difficulties, but Lithuania, for example, also has a very serious problem owing to its size, its geological make-up and its situation.
In this regard, I would like to point out that in 1999 the Council gave its opinion on the need to establish maximum requirements and guarantees in relation to nuclear installations within the European Union. And I would like to point out that the Laeken Council asked for periodic reports on the state of the nuclear safety situation in the Union. These proposals are a response to that.
To respond to a question which was asked earlier, Article 15 lays down, on the one hand, that the Member States must inform the Commission every year of the measures adopted in application of the requirements and that every two years the Commission must report on the general situation within the European Union to Parliament and the Council. In other words, that there are national annual reports by the States to the Commission and the Commission, using these reports and so-called ‘peer reviews’, controls between equals, produces a report every two years to Parliament and the Council on the development and safety of nuclear installations, not only of nuclear power stations, in the European Union.
Another issue that has been raised is whether the countries can refuse to receive nuclear waste they do not want. Of course, provided that it is not their own. In principle, all countries are obliged to take responsibility for their own nuclear waste. This is the rule that binds all of us at the moment. And that rule will remain as a basic principle, which does not mean that if two or three countries voluntarily reach an agreement to share installations or storage facilities, they cannot do so. We are opening up the possibility – thinking specifically of certain European Union countries, small in size, which have very significant geological difficulties and therefore difficulties in creating the necessary infrastructures on their territory – that they may possibly be able to seek agreements with a third country. And if they do not reach them the waste will have to remain in their own countries, that is clear. Nobody is going to be obliged to receive waste from third countries, nobody. What we are proposing is that the different countries can reach agreements amongst themselves on joint storage, but always on the basis of voluntary agreements.
In relation to the agreement with Russia, it is not a question of negotiating anything with regard to the export of material by the European Union. We are proposing the opposite. The situation, very briefly, ladies and gentlemen, is that at the moment Russia is supplying nineteen power stations in candidate countries with fissile material, which involves activity in a series of Russian industrial installations, revenue and technological and industrial development relating to this activity. The technical characteristics of the installations in those countries mean that the best supplies naturally come from where they have always come, that is to say, from the Russian industry. That is the situation of the candidate countries.
Furthermore, with regard to the situation of the current fifteen Member States, we have a limit, in order to guarantee security of supply, on the volume of imports originating from a single country. That maximum limit, imposed by the Corfu Agreement, is 20% of the necessary nuclear fuel. We clearly stand at around that figure, more or less. But if 19 reactors from the candidate countries are incorporated, we will clearly exceed that limit. That is the problem we have to resolve.
In other words, what we are saying when we refer to the agreement with Russia is that they are selling fissile material to a series of countries which on entering the European Union may have problems if the current rules are not changed. What we want is, in exchange for that negotiation, to also reach an agreement with the Russians on an improvement in nuclear safety in Russia and, specifically, the closure of the first-generation Russian nuclear power stations. This is a second element which, in the context of this negotiation, we want to introduce into our relations and our structured energy dialogue with Russia.
With regard to funding, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission has today approved an increase in the margin for Euratom loans. This measure would make EUR 2 000 million available. At the moment we are almost exhausting the existing line. It should be made very clear that this new margin does not mean that there will be many more active appropriations. The majority of appropriations have already been used and even paid back by the borrowers of the loans. But what is required, according to the rules of the Euratom loans, is to open new facilities, to increase the margin so that funds may be available for the dismantling of power stations, in Lithuania or Slovenia for example, or for improving safety in those power stations. In fact, we believe that the Euratom loans are an appropriate instrument.
In any event, I would like to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that here and in the Commission I have said repeatedly that the European Union must become more aware and take decisions in relation to the cost of dismantling certain nuclear power stations in the countries of the East, in certain countries which are going to be members of the European Union. We all know that the closure of power stations is going to be speeded up and that no fund has been set up for dismantling, that they have no money for dismantling. This is a very complicated problem. There was talk of a donors’ club to fund that dismantling of those power stations, but the reality is that the funds generated by that donors’ club are very meagre, if not non-existent. This is something that I have pointed out, that worries me enormously and that we will have to confront."@en1
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