9 Oct (NucNet): The European Commission has decided to exclude nuclear power from new guidelines on state aid for energy and environmental protection set to be adopted in 2014, Joaquín Almunia, commissioner for competition, has said.
The Commission’s 28-member college of commissioners decided yesterday not to include specific provisions on state aid for nuclear energy in the new guidelines.
Mr Almunia said: “We are not talking about the possibility of whether nuclear energy should receive aid or not. We are not talking about encouraging or discouraging member states on nuclear energy”.
If a case of possible state aid for a nuclear energy project is examined by the Commission, the rules described in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union will be applied directly, instead of the new guidelines, Mr Almunia said.
According to internal documents leaked in August, the Commission was considering whether the guidelines should set out principles for the assessment of state aid granted to nuclear power. The college of commissioners has now decided that this will not be the case, Mr Almunia said.
One of the Commission’s roles is to carry out an assessment under state aid rules to check that any subsidies do not unduly distort competition in the EU single market. Without specific rules, the Commission will assess cases of possible state aid for nuclear under general rules on state aid and by building specific criteria through its case practice, a spokesperson for Mr Almunia said.
The spokesperson also said that “the inclusion of such provisions in the guidelines would have no implications whatsoever concerning Germany’s nuclear phaseout”.
The Commission is expected to open a public consultation process on new guidelines on state aid for the energy and environmental protection sectors before the end of 2013. The guidelines will then be adopted in the first half of 2014.
