Budapest denied media report EU Veto nuclear projects with Russia
Monitoring Desk: The prime minister office of Hungary has firmly denied a report run by American newspaper that EU has stopped Hungary to continue its deal with Russia for Paks nuclear power plant, reports Dispatch News Desk news agency.
According to Hungarian communication state secretary for the prime minister’s office, Andras-Giro-Szasz, two reports run by Financial Times are unfounded and baseless. He said recent report is simply hilarious and denied the report of the EU veto or other prohibitive fines on Hungarian nuclear projects with Russia.
It may be mentioned that the Financial Times ran a report on Thursday that EU had blocked Hungary-Russia nuclear deal and its EU nuclear body, Euratom, had refused Hungary’s plans to import nuclear fuel from Russia.
The newspaper said the decision was backed by the European Commission and halted the planned expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant.
Giro-Szasz said he had already asked the Financial Times to issue a correction.
On December 9, 2014, Moscow and Budapest signed a contract for the construction of two new 1,200-megawatt power generating units for its only nuclear plant Paks, set to begin in 2018. It was to be carried out by Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom.
The European Commission allowed the Russian-Hungarian deal to go through.
Earlier in February Financial Times already reported that the European Commission was looking into the legality of Hungary’s contract with Russia and that Budapest could be facing a “veto or prohibitive fine” from the European Union over two concerns.
The first issue is the legality of state subsidies and contracts awarded to Rosatom without a call for bids. The second is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s alleged decision to conceal certain details of the contracts on grounds of national security, according to the publication
