The European Commission proposed, on 27 October, a Council regulation that would set the legal basis for extending financial support to Bulgaria. The money would, if budgetary negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council conclude to that effect, be allocated for the decommissioning of units 1 to 4 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant (NPP). The financial support would also go to alleviating the negative economic effects of the closure of the Soviet-built NPP.

When current decommissioning support terminates in December 2009, the EU should have given €550 million in financial assistance. The Commission is thus proposing a further €300 million for the period 2010-2013. Jan Haverkamp, Greenpeace’s ‘dirty energy’ campaigner, does not expect much opposition in Council (nor in Parliament with its advisory role). “The Bulgarians were not very good in negotiating. They never are. So they got less than the Lithuanians,” said Haverkamp. He was referring to the larger funds for decommissioning NPPs in Slovakia and Lithuania. Before accession in 2004 as well as afterwards (and written into the 2007-2013 financial perspectives), the EU gave over €1.3 billion in assistance to Lithuania and over €510 million to Slovakia. Financial support for decommissioning in Slovakia and Lithuania was thus already safeguarded up until the end of 2013.

NEW PLANT AT BELENE

Separately, Russia’s state-controlled Atomstroyexport continued to seek confirmation as to Bulgaria’s plans with regard to building a new NPP at Belene. Recently in Moscow, Bulgaria’s Minister for Economy and Energy Traicho Traikov was only able to tell his Russian counterpart that economic issues need to be settled first before the government can commit politically.