Strasbourg, 15/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - By adopting through an overwhelming majority (410 to 73 and 21 abstentions) the report by Konstantinos Hatzidakis (Greek, EPP) on the safety of the transport of radioactive matter in the European Union, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to make an assessment of this type of transport within the EU and at its borders (comprising an updated map of flows). This exercise should also enable it to assess the economic and social justification for this type of transport so as to rationalise it and reduce it in both quantity and volume, respecting the precautionary principle, should it transpire that there are more risks than advantages. Parliament urges the Commission to evaluate the viability of the reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel and of the use of MOX in a long-term European perspective and, therefore, the need to transport radioactive matter linked to this business. The EP also pleaded at length in favour of better information of citizens and local authorities concerned by the passage of convoys carrying nuclear waste and reprocessed matter.
Parliament, moreover, rejected all the amendments tabled by French Green Marie Anne Isler Beguin calling, notably, for strengthened EU-wide controls and the abandonment of the reprocessing of nuclear waste, undertaken in the plants of Le Hague in France and Sellafield in the United Kingdom. At a press conference, Ms. Isler Begiun explained that abandoning reprocessing, the economic viability having yet to be proven, would allow for a reduction in the transport of radioactive mater, and denounced "the subtle game of agreements between the two large political groups (PES and EPP/ED) manipulated by the pro-nuclear lobby". EUROPE recalls that Ms. Isler Beguin resigned from her mandate as rapprteur at the end of the vote in the Committee on Regional Policy and Transport, whose chair, Mr. Hatzidakis, was then instructed to present the report in plenary session.