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Opposition calls on govt to drop Paks project in wake of EU concerns
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Budapest (MTI) – Opposition parties on Friday called on the government to abandon the Paks nuclear upgrade project in wake of press reports that the EU had blocked the project.
The Paks nuclear plant upgrade is “unviable and unnecessary”, the opposition LMP party said. Bernadett Szel, LMP’s co-leader, told MTI that the government is not in a position to negotiate “like a peddler”, it should not be thinking about going through with the project even with different companies or altered conditions.
A responsible government in this situation would instead rethink the whole energy strategy for the next decades, she insisted. As part of this strategy, LMP would give preference to renewables, which would reduce the country’s vulnerability and create crisis-proof jobs, she said.
The opposition Dialogue for Hungary (PM) party said community law cannot be sidestepped when carrying out the Paks project. Benedek Javor, the party’s MEP, told a press conference on Friday that, to his knowledge, the EU had “vetoed” the Paks contract because it did not include any alternative routes for supplying fuel for the Paks upgrade. He said this decision depended more on the Russian side than on Hungary, as fuel rod procurement was one of the most lucrative parts of the project.
Javor said Brussels would “not stop here” concerning the Paks upgrade and will enforce EU law without fail. This means that the project is now encumbered on several counts: by an EU competition probe on suspicion of illegal state subsidy, by an internal markets probe on failure to call an international tender on the project and by a cartel procedure. Javor said these concerns were well founded and the conclusion can be drawn that Paks is not viable under its current contract.
The leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) said the content of the Paks upgrade contract should be made public. He also critised that the government had known the EU decision to block the project for a week but had not come forward.