European Union funding for the decommissioning of Lithuania's Soviet-era nuclear reactor has been frozen to raise pressure to wrap up talks on the operation, a top official said Friday amid growing irritation over delays.
European Union funding for the decommissioning of
Lithuania
's
Soviet-era nuclear reactor has been frozen to raise pressure to wrap up talks
on the operation, a top official said Friday amid growing irritation over
delays.
"The decision was taken to suspend financing," EU taxation
commissioner Algirdas Semeta told journalists during a visit to the Baltic
state.
"The donors believe that freeze of financing could help as stimulus to
finally conclude the negotiations," added
Semeta
,
Lithuania
's
member of the EU executive.
In a separate statement, the European Commission said the suspension could be
lifted as soon as
Lithuania
settles a dispute with a consortium of German companies GNS and Nukem, which
were tasked with the decommissioning project.
The formal decision to freeze support was taken by European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, which administers the funding, it said.
In December 2009,
Lithuania
closed its only nuclear power plant, located near Ignalina in the country's
northeast.
Shutting down the plant was a condition of
Lithuania
's
admission to the EU in 2004.
The EU has committed 1.37 billion euros ($1.79 billion) to the end of 2013 for
the decommissioning project.
In the latest proposal for its new budget, starting 2014, the EU has offered
Lithuania
another EUR400 million.
The Lithuanian government has acknowledged delays in the project, which
includes the construction of storage facilities for spent fuel.
But
Vilnius
insisted that the responsibility falls on the main contractor, Russian-owned
German company Nukem.
The closed plant was built when
Lithuania
was
ruled by the
Soviet Union
, and remained the main
supplier of power for the nation of three million in the wake of independence
in 1990.
Lithuania
has
reopened several mothballed gas-fired plants to fill the gap since the
shutdown.
Plans to build a replacement atomic plant near the former site by 2020--in a
project with fellow
Baltic states
Latvia
and
Estonia
--have
proven sluggish, however, with
Lithuania
's new
centre-left government saying its needs to reconsider the deal.
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