foe europe
17 july 2002
brussels
EU COMMISSION’S CONTRIBUTION TO A
SUSTAINABLE WORLD: SPREADING THE NUCLEAR
THREAT TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Today the EU Commission adopted the
Communication on Energy Cooperation with the
Developing Countries as a contribution to the
World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg (WSSD). The Communication
includes a highly controversial chapter
suggesting that the EU may support nuclear
programmes in those countries.
”This is absolutely unacceptable”, says
FoE Europe’s Antinuclear Campaigner Patricia
Lorenz. ”In times when the international
community is fighting the whole range of
nuclear threats from unsafe reactors to dirty
bombs and nuclear weapons, the Commission has
with this paper cleared the way for the EU to
support upcoming nuclear programmes in the
developing world”.
Patricia Lorenz continues, ”contrary to
what the Commission Communication is
implying, nuclear safety can never be
guaranteed and the risk of proliferation of
nuclear material for bomb use by terrorists
and state actors is growing. It is very
cynical to present the nuclear option as a
contribution to the UN-summit in
Johannesburg”.
Furthermore, the EU already made clear
that nuclear energy is not part of a
sustainable development when the EU heads of
state and government at the 2001 Gothenburg
Summit did not accept the EU Commission’s
proposal to include nuclear power in the EU
Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS).
The Communication on Energy Cooperation
with the Developing Countries is also out of
step with the international view on nuclear
power. Nuclear energy and whether it has a
role in sustainable development was hotly
debated last year in the international
community and consequently, the Johannesburg
Draft Plan of Implementation for the World
Summit on Sustainable Development [1] while
addressing energy supply in depth – does not
even mention nuclear energy.
FoE Europe has stressed to the environment
ministers to use this Friday’s informal
European Ministerial in Sonderborg in Denmark
to make clear that the Commission's push to
spread nuclear power is not the EU’s
intention and does not have support of the
member states.
[1]
www.Johannesburgsummit.org/html/whats_new/whatsnew.html
: Draft
Plan of Implementation for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development
|
