EC Offers EUR 300 M More for Kozlodui NPP

The European Commission officially offered EUR 300 million more to be granted to Bulgaria as compensation for the closure of NPP Kozlodui’s four small reactors, AFP informed.

In December the European Council and the European Parliament will determine the exact sum.

The money is for the period 2010-2013. Thus the conditions for Bulgaria will be equalized to these for Lithuania and Slovakia, which also closed nuclear reactors and received for this financial support from the EU until 2013.

The money is intended for disassembling reactors 1 to 4 of the nuclear plant that Bulgaria closed as a condition for its EU membership. According to Spokesperson of the European Commission Ferran Tarradellas Espuny some of the money could go for meeting the economic and social consequences from the plant’s stop, as well as for energy effectiveness, building new energy facilities, such as renewable energy and improving the capacities of NPP Kozlodui’s blocks 5 and 6.

”This investment in a safer and more sustainably developed Bulgarian energy network expresses our desire Bulgaria to integrate fully in the single European energy market. I consider this an important display of European solidarity and of our decisiveness to treat equally all member-states”, a special press release of EC President Jose Manuel Barroso reads.

Spokesperson of the European Commission on Energy Matters Ferran Tarradellas emphasized the

money allocation will depend on the European Parliament and the European Council and it is yet not clear where it will come from.

”It was very important namely the Commission to propose this, as now a dispute goes on between the Commission and the European Parliament on the budget for the following years. EC will do it in the best possible manner – not with additional funds for the member-states, buth throught redistributing the current budget”, MEP and Deputy Chair of the Budget Committee with the European Parliament Ivailo Kalfin said in a interview for the Bulgarian National Radio.

He elaborated that in the end of this year expire the compensations agreed upon at the closure of blocks 3 and 4 of Bulgaria’s NPP. Kalfin reminded a ”loophole” existed yet at the adoption of the budget frame for 2007-2013 and our country has managed to bid for compensations reconsideration in this intermediate period at end-2009.

”I’m happy President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso fulfilled his promise to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and today we must congratulate ourselves for the extra funds for NPP Kozlodui’s closure within the next three years”, foreign minister Rumiana Zheleva stated in Luxemburg, Focus cites her saying.

”In the European Council I expect no burdens because we are working for long,

since the meeting of Prime Minister Borissov and EC President Barroso on September 10. Since then we have never stopped searching for a lobby for Bulgaria, as we know what the procedure is. It’s not that easy, as it spoken a year ago that we were to gain an additional compensation. I’m glad we now have the support of Germany and France, and I think Italy would back us too”, Zheleva elaborated.

Sergey Stanishev’s cabinet demanded sums increase and extension of the term for using the reactors as early as 2005.

In the last ten years Bulgaria has received from EC EUR 550 million for the closure and disassembling of the first four reactors of NPP Kozlodui.

Bulgaria’s accession agreement sets out EUR 230 million for the period 2007-2009 as compensations for stopping the reactors. So far contracts are concluded for 92% of the funds for 2007 and 2008, and EUR 77.5 million for this year is yet to be assumed. Apart from the compensations, Bulgaria has also received a loan of EUR 200 million from Europe’s Agency for Nuclear Energy Euratom for the modernization of Kozlodui’s blocks 5 and 6.