Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-13-Speech-2-207"
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"en.20011113.10.2-207"2
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"Madam President, I will answer the honourable gentleman's questions as follows. Firstly, resources for the additional measures to improve implementation are being taken from the Phare budget, so additional resources are not being drawn on, nor are resources being transferred. This is, rather, a change of priorities in Phare's programming, something of which, by the way, I informed Parliament some time ago. We had also said that we were ready to adjust priorities in view of the fallout from 11 September, if it were a question of meeting stricter conditions in internal and legal policy, police cooperation and the securing of our external frontiers.
As you know, the Commission has no authority in matters of reactor safety. I do not know what the Court of Auditors is referring to in this instance; it may be to the work of the Council working party on nuclear energy issues, which, however, is not a Commission office. The Commission is in no way responsible and is not involved in any steps to improve nuclear safety in candidate countries. All the Commission does is to negotiate the required decommissioning of the reactors, regarded by the Member States as incapable of being retrofitted, with the relevant countries such as Lithuania, Bulgaria and Slovakia and then go on to implement such decommissioning. This has to a large degree been completed, as you know. We still await a final closure date for Ignalina II in Lithuania and an offer of finance for this, still outstanding, is expected in the near future.
Apart from that, we in the Commission have nothing to do with the construction of further nuclear power stations in Central and Eastern European countries. I must say quite frankly that this is the first time I have heard of this criticism by the Court of Auditors. I would myself be very grateful, and I imagine the President would be too, if the Commission were to have responsibility for nuclear safety standards. I must, though, tell you that the Member States, and you as an Austrian Member will know how watchful the Member States are in the Melk process in which the Commission is mediating between Austria and the Czech Republic, determinedly refuse to let the Commission create conditions that would lead to the rise of European Community law on reactor safety standards. I am, though, quite happy to come back to this subject when I have been informed about this report by the Court of Auditors.
As regards the Turkish Prime Minister's statement, what Mr Ecevit has said is nothing new to me; I have heard it in many conversations with him and read it in articles by him for over a year. Our response is quite clear. If, first condition, no political reunification of Cyprus is achieved; if, second presupposition, the Member States decide, and Parliament agrees, that Cyprus should be admitted in any case; and if, thirdly, Turkey were then to react in that way – all hypothetical questions at present – if, though, that were to happen, it would result in probably the worst crisis ever in relations between Turkey and the European Union. I do not at present see how we could quickly extricate ourselves from such a crisis."@en1
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