Strasbourg, 07/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - The rejection by the European Parliament on Wednesday 6 April of the draft common resolution of the EPP, S&D, ALDE, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups on the lessons to be learnt from the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami in the country on 11 March 2011 by 264 to 300 with 61 abstentions illustrated the deep divisions at the European Parliament between and within political parties about the future of atomic energy.
Despite the fact that all MEPs agree that stress tests must be carried out on all 143 nuclear power plants in the EU and any future plants to test resistance to a range of factors (earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, terrorist attacks and so on) and agreement that the tests should also be carried out on current and new nuclear power stations in countries neighbouring on the EU (but with questions about whether the parties that carry out such tests would be genuinely independent), the EP could not agree on the lessons to be learnt from the Japanese nuclear catastrophe in order to boost nuclear safety in Europe. The Social Democrats (S&D) and Greens/EFA in particular opposed the final draft when an amendment tabled by Marita Ulvskog (S&D, Sweden) urging member states to prepare feasible strategies for phasing out nuclear power over the medium to long-term was rejected.
After the vote, the political groups accused one another of being responsible for the EP's failure to agree on a common line on such a controversial issue.
French members of the EPP, Gaston Franco, Jean-Pierre Audy, Françoise Grossetête and Philippe Juvin, said that they regretted the demagogy used in the debate about nuclear power, saying that the Greens had been taking advantage of the shock rightly generated in public opinion at the catastrophe in Japan by jumping in to attack nuclear power. The four added that the Greens' extremism had blinded them to the true questions and had prevented the EP from reaching a strong common position.
The head of the Liberal group (ALDE), Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, laid the blame on: “Two extreme position, those who want nothing to happen and those who want nuclear plants to close down immediately, have hindered the Parliament to have a position at all.” “It is absolutely scandalous that the European Parliament does not have an opinion about nuclear safety. Given the information we have about the safety of some European nuclear plants and at plants in neighbouring countries, the parliamentarians who voted against this resolution bear a heavy responsibility”, added Sweden's Lena Ek.
In the Green Party, Luxembourg's Claude Turmes says that the failure was due to Lena Ek, the Liberal group's coordinator for this matter, suggesting that she should not have called her group to vote in favour of the amendment lodged by the S&D because she is a member of a pro-nuclear party in power in Sweden (the Centre Party). French ecologist Yannick Jadot said the failure was due to hypocrisy because the resolution only hinted at important nuclear safety issues and missed an opportunity to decide to phase out nuclear power, which is why his party opposed the resolution. He said that like more and more of his colleagues, he feared that France and Europe would have to phase out nuclear power because of the enormity of the risks of failing to do so. (E.H./transl.fl)