Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, when we think back today in Parliament to the accident in Chernobyl, what we remember is the cynical attitude taken by a dictatorship towards man’s safety and his environment. I stress this point because we have, of course, acted in the debate on many occasions as if Chernobyl were everywhere. It is not. Twelve years ago a dictatorship crumbled, a dictatorship which from the outset did not have the standard of technical safety which we have in the rest of the world or, more to the point, in Europe. For the rest, we should clarify that, in a democracy, discussion takes place in public. That alone contributes to safety. A democracy has independent supervisory agencies. That too contributes to safety. And it has independent courts, which again contribute to safety. In other words, a democratic system operating under the rule of law is, per se, such an important safety factor that any parallels need to be made clear at this point. The consequences of the cynical attitude of a dictatorship, which had a nuclear power station which was unsafe from the outset and four reactors which were shut down in December in response to international pressure, have had to be borne mainly by the people in the countries affected. I note that, even twelve years after the fall of the Soviet Union, many leading politicians have yet to depart from this cynical attitude towards the people, as the truly abysmal treatment of the people after the sinking of the Kursk proved. Public discussion is still not a routine matter there and we would do well to bear that in mind. We are right to say in our resolution that there is widespread concern. But I also notice that many people are wrongly feeding this concern in order to achieve a completely different objective, namely to lump unsafe nuclear power stations together with the safe nuclear power stations which are currently being built around the world, including soon in the Union and America, and this is unacceptable. This does not apply in other technical areas: if something goes wrong with a car, we do not ban all cars, and if an aeroplane crashes, it is terrible, but we do not ban all aeroplanes. We want help for the Ukraine. But we must also tell the Ukraine and ourselves that we cannot rest easily just by giving money; we must put conditions in place there so that money in a functioning economic system can fulfil the same purpose as it does in a democracy, which is why we expect – as the resolution makes clear – all manner of changes and adjustments to the energy system in the Ukraine. Commissioner Wallström, if we are talking about learning lessons, then that applies in particular to the candidate countries. We have nine new nuclear power stations there with 27 reactors. Of which we know that three power stations with eight reactors are to be shut down. But we know equally well that other parts of nuclear power stations can be upgraded and that brings me to my sixty-four thousand dollar question to you, Commissioner: the Commission is conducting accession negotiations, including on the “standard energy safety” chapter on behalf of the European Union. Parliament is still waiting for you to tell us and the public exactly which nuclear power station safety standard the negotiations are based on. To my knowledge you have promised Parliament as much on several occasions, but the matter is still pending. The Commission has a debt to discharge here. I only hope that the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy will receive a clear answer from you as soon as possible as to what safety standard negotiations with candidate countries are based on. It is a question of the utmost interest to all of us and all of our citizens.

Political group: PPE-DE