Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant is a problem of not Lithuania but EU - Russian News - REGNUM

Lithuanian prime minister: Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant is a problem of not Lithuania but EU - Russian News - REGNUM

During the discussion of the EU general budget on the night of December 17, the final compromise did not suit two states ? Lithuania and Poland. As a REGNUM correspondent reports, unlike Latvia and Estonia, Lithuania failed to obtain from the EU extra expenditures on the lagging industries in the country. Instead, Prime Minister of the EU-chairing Great Britain Tony Blair proposed to increase expenditures for closing the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. According to Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, nobody asked him to do it. Lithuania, on the contrary, was seeking increase in structural funds financing by the EU.

Brazauskas, the only one from the EU member-countries? leadership discussing the budget, twice announced at the meeting on Saturday that increasing financing Ignalina Power Plant should not be associated with Lithuania. Brazauskas stressed that to close the power plant is not Lithuania?s task, but the EU obligation. Tony Blair answered to this by an obligation to find extra money for the plant later and proposed to add extra 120 million euro into the structural funds.

Thus, Lithuania has obtained 220 million euro to structural funds, 50 million euro to close Ignalina Power Plant and extra 120 million euro. Overall, almost 400 million euro will be received by Lithuania.

At 03:00 a.m. on December 17, EU leaders adopted the EU general budget for seven years. It amounts to 862 billion euro. It is 13 billion more than it was supposed earlier. The extra money will be divided between new and old member-countries.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home