Mr President, I would like to start by thanking the rapporteurs most warmly for these reports, as also all those who played their part in preparing this debate. I would, though, also like to thank the Commission, for in my many years in this House – almost twenty-five of them so far – never before has a Commission dared to put its head as far above the parapet as this one when it comes to the safety of nuclear power stations and the safe disposal of radioactive waste. I really would like to thank you for that. I see that as progress, as an advance on what we have had up to now, for a remarkable contradiction is apparent. On the one hand, one cannot deny that there are of course such things as radioactive risks and that these are transnational in nature, but, on the other, we refuse to acknowledge that these transnational risks need to be managed on a European basis. These directives do nothing to resolve that contradiction, but we have, all the same, moved on a bit. It is for that reason that I favour a directive rather than the recommendation that some Member States are demanding, some of them with very different considerations in mind. Not the least reason why I favour a directive is that it will be capable of being extended in future. Admittedly, as many have already said, these directives leave responsibility with the Member States, but, as things stand today, that makes sense and that should be affirmed; directives do have the advantage that the responsibility, being with the national governments, will become more transparent in future. What that means is that we – or rather those of us who will be re-elected – will have the opportunity to hold, in this House, a debate on inspection reports. My next point is a brief one on the Vidal-Quadras Roca report: what is waste? There has been much discussion of the way in which waste has been defined in an actually political way, which the Commission text has also done to some extent, in other words, that waste is waste if it is not reused. Physically speaking, though, it can indeed be reused, and that is why retrieval is extraordinarily important. It may very well be that, in a century or two’s time, what is now waste will perhaps again become fuel; it is certainly feasible in terms of the physics involved. As we should leave future generations that option, retrieval must be a possibility. I might add that this should also be done for ecological reasons; we may well not believe this to be possible, but one day it may be that. Next, let me turn to reduction – of waste, of volume, of toxicity – and I would like to address something that we have not discussed in this House, but that we certainly will have to discuss in the future, namely the transmutation of long-life isotopes. It is, in principle, very definitely possible for transmutation to reduce the half-life of long-life isotopes, especially the minor actinides, and also the volume of these pollutants or of this waste, so that less toxic matter has to be finally stored. Interestingly enough, though, this requires research, and a new generation of technology, and the possibility cannot be excluded of this becoming part of the technologies and philosophy intrinsic to and incorporated in the reactor, perhaps in the fourth generation of nuclear power stations. Although I mention this only in passing, that too is not something that should be ruled out. Work is in any case being done on it and on Generation 4, and the Commission is playing its part in it. The next point to which we had to devote a great deal of attention, is the funds issue, that is, of how the decommissioning of a power station or installation is to be funded. What we have now got presented to us by the Council is a much-reduced form of this, and it is probable that a majority of this House will vote in favour of it. Whilst I think that is sensible, one question that will not thereby be resolved is that of competition, in view of there being not only the Euratom Treaty, but also the competition articles. It may well be that someone will realise, and point out, that there are enterprises that have to put aside a lot of money for these funds, whilst others get funding from their governments; does this not put at a competitive disadvantage those who put money into these funds? The directive makes no reference to anything of the sort, and I do not suppose that this is what the Council of Ministers intended, but I am certain that this issue will again need to be discussed in the next few years. All in all, I see this debate and the directive as progress, and hope that we will, tomorrow, adopt the reports by a large majority.

Political group: PSE