Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) expressed their concerns on Thursday 14 January about the nuclear power plant in Ostrovets (Belarus), which could begin commercial operation as early as March, during an exchange with the European Commission in which MEPs from Belarus’ neighbouring Member States were the main speakers.
“The Ostrovets nuclear power plant is a clear threat to our national security”, said Andrius Kubilius (EPP, Lithuania), recalling Lithuania’s concerns about nuclear safety, the country which is geographically closest to the plant (see EUROPE 12594/27).
“All Member States should be worried”, his Estonian colleague Riho Terras (EPP) then supported him, while calling on the EU to show solidarity with Member States in the region.
According to these two Baltic MEPs, the EU cannot trust Alexander Lukashenko’s regime to ensure the safety of the plant.
“It is possible that future problems or incidents will be concealed”, given that Belarus is currently ruled by “ an authoritarian regime”, said Mr Terras.
Like Mr Kubilius, Jerzy Buzek (EPP, Poland) agreed that this was a geopolitical project, which would therefore require more than a purely technical response.
For Thierry Mariani (ID, France), on the other hand, the EU must engage in dialogue with Minsk by focusing on just one technical issue: the safety of the power plant.
Chairing the session, Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, Poland) announced that a motion for a resolution on the subject would be put to a vote in the ITRE Committee on 28 January, with a view to adoption at the Parliament’s February plenary session.
For his part, the Deputy Director General of the Energy Department (DG ENER) of the Commission, Massimo Garribba, said that the conclusions of the Peer Review process led by the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Grouping (ENSREG) should be published in the coming months. However, the Commission aims to have a preliminary report available before the commercial operation of the plant begins, he added. Furthermore, he assured that the institution services were assessing the possibility of measures that could prevent commercial imports of electricity from nuclear installations in non-Member States that do not comply with the safety levels recognised by the EU, as requested by the European Council last December, and that they would come back to this at a later stage, when the work of the experts had been completed. While the import of electricity directly from Belarus was stopped on 3 November, the flow of Belarusian electricity through Russia and via Latvia continues. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)