Mr President, Commissioner, the Commission has had good intentions in proposing a directive to improve the safety of nuclear installations. Good intentions are not enough, however. The proposal for a directive drafted by the Commission is inappropriate and should not be approved as it stands. The fact is that electricity is produced by means of nuclear power. When nuclear power is being used the safety of the equipment must be at a level that is as technically high as possible. The improvement of safety in nuclear power plants today must be a project that both the supporters and opponents of nuclear power are involved in. In its directive the Commission is proposing a transfer of power from the Member States to the Commission itself. It does not, however, specify in the directive the principles on which it would wield its additional powers. If the directive were adopted, the Commission would virtually have carte blanche to adopt a position on safety criteria for nuclear installations. Representatives of many Member States understandably object to the directive because they are afraid of high-handed monitoring practices. If nuclear plant safety is to be regulated by a directive, it must define precisely those powers the Commission is to be given and the principles upon which those powers are to be used. Such is not the case with this Commission proposal. Responsibility for the safety of nuclear installations must always lie with the plant itself, by which I mean the polluter pays. Plants have to comply with national laws and the regulations laid down by the national authorities. There must be no attempt to transfer responsibility from the plants to the Commission. The authorities must act to improve the safety of nuclear installations in collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The latter has set out principles that represent the world’s best shared experience of the safety of nuclear plants and the monitoring of safety. We have to move forward on that basis. The Commission has no equivalent resources. In fact it has been unable to show Parliament it will have the personnel resources it should have at its disposal if it acquired additional responsibilities in the monitoring of nuclear safety. In that regard, the directive would weaken safety, not improve it. Representatives of quite a number of Member States have also drawn the same conclusion. At meetings led by the Italian Presidency they eventually proposed some fundamental amendments to the Commission proposal, and our committee took a sympathetic view of the Council position in our report. The Commission proposed in its directive that the management of the decommissioning funds in respect of nuclear power plants should be reformed in such a way that they should remain financially independent of other funds pertaining to nuclear power companies. It was right to insist on that. It is essential to the safety of nuclear installations that adequate funds are set side for the decommissioning of plants whilst they are still operating. They have to be managed in such a way that they do not produce competition distortions in the price of electricity in the market. The Commission proposal is justified in this respect. On account of opposition from the Member States, however, the Commission has been unable to produce a balanced proposal, and for that reason it is only right to keep this outside the scope of the directive and call for a new directive on this very issue. The Commission has justified the need for the directive with indirect reference to the accession to the EU of the new Member States. According to reports received by the committee, the standards of safety in nuclear power installations in the Member States joining the EU in May is no worse than those in current Member States, especially when we consider that the Ignalina power station in Lithuania is being wound down. We on the committee have worked on this basis. If someone could show that standards of safety in nuclear installations in the new Member States are significantly worse than in the current Member States, that would be an important new item of information. The committee’s compromise proposal can, I think, be approved as it is. Finally, I wish to point out to the Commissioner that she obviously misinterpreted the committee’s opinion of this matter. Parliament in its report is more in favour of the opinion of certain Member States represented in the Council than that of the Commission, and does not intend to approve the Commission proposal as it stands.

Political group: GUE-NGL