Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Premier Stanishev wants to reopen nuclear reactors closed as precondition for Bulgaria's EU membership

Immediately after Putin's visit to Bulgaria in January, our Premier minister Sergey Stanishev announced the start of a campaign called "I want light". Details e.g. here in English, here and here in Bulgarian (update - also here). The campaign is to demand reopening of two reactors at Kozloduy nuclear plant that were closed as a precondition for Bulgaria's EU membership. Stanishev appealed to us ordinary Bulgarians to take the cause close to our hearts, as we did with the last year's "You are not alone" campaign in support of our accused medics in Libya. (So far, I don't see any grass-root enthusiasm about the Premier's idea.)
The European Union wanted the reactors closed for the sake of security, or at least this was said. Some Bulgarian and Russian experts claim that they were in fact totally safe. I don't know, I am no expert, and after all safety was claimed also about the Chernobyl plant before the 1986 accident.
Besides, it was Bulgaria who was eager to join EU before 2007, it was not EU eager to join Bulgaria. So Europeans had the full right to demand from us whatever they wanted, and we had the options of either complying or withdrawing the application. I mean, if we really wanted the reactors so much, we could very well stay outside EU. But I find it a disgrace to comply with European demands and then after becoming a member state to say, "Now we don't intend to keep what we have signed, you can be as angry as you want but you cannot order us out of EU once you let us in!" To cap it all, Bulgaria has received from EU money to close the reactors.
I have written before that current Bulgarian government is a unit measure for arrogance and that statements of one or another minister are shameful, but I think this latest performance of Premier Stanishev takes the cake!

4 comments:

Estranged said...

As far as I remember, we had to comply an agreement, made at the time of Berov, and things in Kozloduy have changed a lot since then?

And what about the European experts? And the claims that we have surpassed all their expectations in terms of security?

Maya M said...

Check the link I've just added as an update (also from the Kapital site).
It doesn't matter that things in Kozloduy may have changed, as far as the signatures of our representatives remain the same.
I don't think that the opinions of some European experts who praise the security at Kozloduy could shift the balance of European public opinion. Especially after, as I hinted, it is not clear whether security is the real concern of Europeans. Some think that it is just a pretext and in fact Europe doesn't want more energy dependence from Russia. And after they cannot stop us from building more Russia-dependent nuclear facilities, they at least insist on closing the old ones.
We cannot violate so brutally the agreements we have signed. And Stanishev in fact knows this perfectly. His campaign has other purposes.

Estranged said...

I still feel pity for the loss of Kozloduy, but having read all the links, I can see why the campaign is ridiculous, and in some way, typical for the populism of БСП. This is not the case with the info I'm getting from the regular press.

Maya M said...

Thank you! This is exactly what I meant.