EU Liberalisation is Regulation

The EU liberalisation of the energy market have been presented as a political tool enabling Western Europe to phase out nuclear power faster. To strengthen further transnational corporation competition and concentration the EU have decided to liberalise the national energy markets and establish a single Western European market expanding also eastwards

The so called EU liberalisation can more correctly be described as a reregulation, states Dennis Pamlin in an unpublished report, board member of Friends of the Earth Sweden. The earlier regulation focused on customers rights to get electricity, the new regulation is focused on the right of producers to maximise their profit.

With the earlier regulation public authorities planned the energy production with the aim to deliver electricity to all households in the country to the same price, now transnational companies are given the right to compete with each other. What will happen to electricity supply in the non-profitable periphery of EU member states in the future is nothing that worried the responsible EU commissioner, but ought to worry others. Behind the EU liberalisation lies as before huge state subsidies for large scale energy infra structure programs, building gas pipe lines, or EU subsidized nuclear power contracts to prolong the lives the nuclear power industry.

Negative aspects

The last years many nuclear power plants in the US and Canada have been closed years before their design life had run out. This has been stated as proof of the result of liberalisation of the energy market. When the energy industry have to pay the full price for nuclear power generated electricity, and customers can buy their electricity from anywhere, the result would be massive closure of nuclear power plants. But the results on energy markets in countries already dominated by private companies, and energy markets in countries dominated by public electricity production, are not necessarily the same.

The Swedish case has so far shown how liberalisation has stopped the democratically decided phase-out of nuclear power. Here huge state subsidies established the nuclear power system. With EU liberalisation those subsidies will be privatised while the state still has the resonsibility to take on the environmental and social risks. The result so far for the phasing out of nuclear power plants have been the opposite to the predictions by some environmentalists positive towards EU liberalisation. It can become even worse. EU liberalisation can become the main political tool to destroy the strongest stand of the anti-nuclear movement by establishing a transnational nuclear waste regime.

Reregulatory liberalisation has given power to huge transnational corporations, which gives them the ability to turn democratic political decisions into juridical expert decisions and using one country against the other. The economic costs of nuclear power plants are estimated to maximise the profits of the transnational companies (TNCs), not counting the social and environmental costs for the complete nuclear fule cycle. The environmental issue becomes secondary to juridical and economical considerations in spite of the high risks connected to nuclear power.

Democracy or TNC expert rule ?

In a swedish referendum in 1980 the winning proposal stated explicitly that the ownership of nuclear power in the future had to be public while the nuclear power in construction should be finished before the whole nuclear power program should be phased-out. The anti-nuclear votes gained slightly less then 40% of the votes while the pro-nuclear votes opening up for private ownership but otherwise almost identical to the social-liberal middle way proposal gained slightly more than 20%.

Norway stops phase-out

In Norway a nuclear power program was not an issue before the international anti-nuclear movement had built a momentum. Thus a broad coalition of local, social and political inteterests was able to get a democratic decision that Norway should not build nuclear power plants. The former social democratic energy minister of Norway, Ranveig Fr�yland, promised the Swedish government in a letter 1997 that "Norwegian interests will not put a hinder to closure of nuclear power plants by Swedish authorities." Later the same year the Norwegian state company Statkraft gained a decisive share of the ownership of Sydkraft, a company owning the Swedish nuclear power plants at Barseb�ck as well as 54,5 % of OKG, a company owning both the Swedish central nuclear waste plant and nuclear reactors at Oskarshamn.

Together with Preussen Elektra the Norwegian state company gained the possible company control this year when HEW, Hamburger Elektricit�ts-W�rke, another German energy company bought a share in Sydkraft which put Sydkraft ownership into the hands of a foreign majority. In 1998 the Norwegian state company used its new power together with HEW to elect managing director Hans-Dieter Harg of Preussen Elektra chairman of the board of Sydkraft replacing the authorities of Malm�, a city close to Barseb�ck. This was part of a long-term strategy by Preussen Elektra and its owner VEBA to gain a key position on the international market after the full privatisation of VEBA 1987.

With Preussen Elektra in the control of Sydkraft and the EU promoted liberalisation of the energy market starting in Sweden 1996, it was easy to turn open democratic decisions into closed juridical expert secrets post-poning the implementation of democratic decisions into an indefinable future. A final decision had been made to phase out the nuclear power plant at Barseb�ck by the social democratic government supported by the Center party, the left-wing party and the Greens. A law was introduced enabling the government to cancel the rights to run nuclear reactors due to a reorientation of the Swedish energy system decided by the parliament. Preussen Elektra had a completly different aim. The democratic decision in february 1997 to close down Barseb�ck on the 1st of July 1998 was overturned by a juridical offensive from Sydkraft and Preussen Elektra. Since then the open democratic process has been changed into secret expert messages, as the court in Sweden decided in the favour of Sydkraft to start a long juridical process instead of following the democratic decision. The Norwegian state company has thus effectively stopped the Swedish authorities from closing nuclear plants. In the world of liberalised energy producers there is no longer such a thing as responsible democracy, it has been replaced by corporate and expert rule.

Nuclear power future at stake

Sydkraft have had 20 juridical experts working for them. In a society more and more dependent of TNCs, less resources are left over for public interest and democratic planning. To VEBA, Preussen Elektra and Sydkraft many things are at stake in the battle of the Barseb�ck nuclear power plant against the Swedish state. The companies want to become players on the whole EU-market. They even want to expand beyond that and Preussen Elektra is strongly promoting the Baltic Ring. To them it is of importance that the moral discussion of our right to continue to take the land of indigenous people to use it for uranium mining is kept outside the economic and juridical discussions. The huge state subsidies that have established the whole nuclear fule cycle is also something the private nuclear industry wants to gain profit from while not paying the social and ecological price. If the industry had to pay market price for insurance of their nuclear power they had to close down tomorrow. Here EU is discussing no liberalisation at all, but continued state responsibiliy for the private companies insurance costs.

By using their full strength against a weaker state than Germany, Preussen Elektra and VEBA also want to gain strength in their battle at home with the Red-green government, that also has proclaimed that it wants to phase-out nuclear power. By forcing the Swedish government to give up or pay an extremely high price in compensation for closing Barseb�ck the risk is that a precendence is set that will make it economically impossible to phase-out both the German and Swedish nuclear power plants. Tord Bj�rk

Swedish