Translated material
The fight for the nuclear power plant
The European Union threatens Lithuania with financial sanctions
Parliamentary elections will be held in Lithuania this coming Sunday. We have already written about the expected layouts for them . In the West, they fear that if the Order and Justice party of ex-Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas and the Labor Party of Viktor Uspaskich succeeds, Lithuanian politics may become “pro-Russian”. But these parties are unlikely to be able to gain a significant advantage over the conservative Fatherland Union and the Social Democrats of Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas, so the future cabinet of ministers will apparently be a coalition one.Along with the elections to the Seimas, a referendum is also planned, in which the population is asked to support the idea of extending the life of the second unit of the Ignalina nuclear power plant , which Lithuania, according to its commitment to the European Union, is obliged to close by the end of 2009. Some Lithuanian experts believe that this was a political decision.
Back in 2004, the Lithuanian State Nuclear Energy Safety Commission, based on the conclusions of nuclear scientists from Sweden, Russia, France, the USA and other countries and assessing the effect of more than 300 technical measures to improve the reliability of the Ignalina NPP, issued it a perpetual operating license. But Vilnius succumbed to pressure from the European Union and signed a protocol with obligations to close the station to the accession agreement to this organization. Lithuania feared that otherwise it would not be accepted into the EU, which it finally joined on May 1, 2004. But then the authorities came to their senses, realizing what dire consequences this could have for the economy.
Firstly, it turned out that after 2009 there will be an energy shortage, and it can only be replenished from one source - RAO UES of Russia. Secondly, the energy generated at conventional stations will cost at least three times more than at the Ignalina NPP, since the need for rapidly rising gas will increase significantly. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the Russian Gazprom will supply additional volumes of fuel. Thirdly, Lithuania will lose considerable income from stopping the export of surplus energy.
All these circumstances gave rise to the idea of building a new nuclear power plant - to replace the Ignalina station built in Soviet times, whose first reactor was closed at the end of 2004. Only now between the closure of the old station and the date of the proposed construction of the new one (in 2018-2020), a dangerous pause arose. That is why the Lithuanians started talking about the need to bow to the European Commission and ask it to delay the closure of the second block at least until this time.
At first, Lithuanian parties and individual politicians competed among themselves in their commitment to this idea, but many of them tucked their tails between their legs when faced with the rejection of the leadership of the European Commission, in particular its head Jose Manuel Barroso and European Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs. For example, the leaders of the Fatherland Union abruptly changed their position. The country's president, Valdas Adamkus, behaved the same way, criticizing the referendum idea, calling it a waste of money. The other day he suggested not using the word “negotiations” at all, so as not to irritate the EU: “In fact, we only need more time to remain an energy state.”
And the ruling Social Democrats in the current ruling coalition, although they do not verbally give up attempts to reach an agreement with the EU, are not very active. At the beginning of the year, Prime Minister Kirkilas instructed ex-Prime Minister Alexander Abishala to conduct negotiations and even created a working group with him. Negotiations began after long behind-the-scenes consultations only on September 17, when the prime minister, having met with Barroso and other European Commission officials, immediately ran into their irreconcilable “no.” Barroso explained to Kirkilas that “the train has left” and the situation cannot be changed. After all, this requires the consent of all EU members with all parliamentary procedures, for which there is simply no time.
In response to the prime minister's laments about the critical situation Lithuania and the entire Baltic region would be in after 2009, Barroso replied that the problem must be solved by implementing projects to connect the Baltics to European energy networks. For example, through the construction of “electric bridges” to Poland and Sweden, a terminal for liquefied gas, connecting the gas pipeline system with the Polish one for access to Germany, and so on.
Earlier in August, the representative of the European Commission in Vilnius, Jurgis Vilcinskas, announced the uselessness of the referendum, warning that failure to fulfill obligations could result in financial sanctions for Lithuania. This threat remains valid. Representatives of the European Union remind that Lithuania has already been allocated 529 million euros from the organization’s budget, and another 837 million euros are planned to be issued by 2013. This money is expected to be enough not only to close the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, but also to modernize conventional power plants. Against this background, a series of recent visits by Kirkilas to European countries to campaign in support of Lithuania look more like a demonstration of activity, so that later one could say: “I did what I could.”
Since all this is happening on the eve of the elections to the Sejm, the topic of extending the operation of the nuclear power plant has become the most important in the course of the political struggle. While the president and a number of right-wing parties have given up, the center-left forces, on the contrary, are demonstrating determination. Order and Justice leader Rolandas Paksas said that if his party forms the government, his first decision will be to extend the operation of the station. The leader of the Labor Party, Viktor Uspaskich, proposes to act even more decisively - to pay a fine, which, in his estimation, will be a much smaller loss than the damage from the closure of the station.
The results of the referendum will be advisory in nature and will not have legal force. As Raimondas Lopata, director of the Lithuanian Institute of International Politics and Relations, noted, politicians talked too much about energy security, but did very little: “Ignalina is the main national interest. This is a fundamental question, but the answer to it has not been found.”