The Austrians are unhappy about the nuclear reactors on their borders. Since they have none of their own (having wisely passed a referendum in 1978 to close forever the completed by unstarted reactor at Zentendorf), this is understandable. Austria as a member of the EU has a unique opportunity to influence the future of nuclear power in the region as the EU attempts to expand.

There is certainly a wrong way to do this. The nationalist Austrian Freedom Party is growing in popularity by promoting xenophobia and national isolationism. Their simple plan for dealing with the expansion of the EU and nuclear power is to put forward a binding referendum, which says "No country can enter the EU with an operating Russian designed nuclear reactor". Ignoring for a moment that this would require throwing Finland out of the EU, this proposal is unsatisfactory even to people who want these reactors closed as quickly as possible.

Let's ignore the racist motivations for the Freedom party's proposal, even though they are probably more than half of the reason for plan. Instead let us focus on why the plan will not work. On the surface, one could argue that Austria is entitled to use its "exploding veto" to protect itself from what it considers a significant threat. The Greeks, who are less economically and politically powerful than the Austrians, have a long history of blocking EU projects and policies in cases where unanimous approval is required. They have been so effective in fact, that this is one of the reasons that the expanding EU is switching to qualified majority voting for a number of policy decisions which previously required unanimous consent.

The principal problem with this proposal is that it does not solve the problem of energy generation in the east. The Czech Republic and other "accession states" need assistance from the EU if they are to move away from there nuclear dependence, rather than obstacles and criticism. The EU should link a massive energy restructuring program to new membership from the east. Using programs similar to the EBRD funded Energy Service Company support loans, which works with larger energy users supporting investments to reduce energy use. Programs like Hnuti DUHA's Clean Energy Brigades project should be funded nationally in a distributed way, with towns and villages applying for grants to pay local people to install efficiency materials at cost in both smaller businesses and residences. These kinds of programs would fit easily into the multi billion crown Framework Funding plans of the Union.

Austria should also appeal to the EU free market advocates and require that the Czech Republic immediately deregulate the electricity industry upon entry to the EU, including state divestiture of CEZ. This would mean all customers in the Czech Republic could buy electricity from any source inside of the country OR from other EU countries. This is consistent with the policy in the rest of the Union countries and will require that CEZ open itself up to real competition (which it has quite successfully blocked to date). The economic disadvantage of Temelin, which is now officially approaching a 100 billion Crown price tag, will be so obvious that the project will stop itself before CEZ goes bankrupt trying to complete construction without state support.

As for Dukovany, this aging and accident prone reactor should have a fixed phase out schedule. The EU and EBRD have failed in both Bulgaria and Lithuania in requiring reactors to be closed on fixed schedules. While the EBRD has provided some aid for nuclear safety upgrades, they have done nothing to insure that replacement power was made available (either in the form of new generating sources or efficiency). The danger at Dukovany is the same as in these other nuclear states: The nuclear lobby is extremely powerful and has been able to block energy policy, which could provide replacement power. A timetable for phase out is useless without a corresponding timetable for efficiency and new source development. Here the banking famous country of Austria can be extremely supportive.

So my advice to Austria is not to be tempted by the elegant but ineffective demand of your far right political parties. Instead Austria should learn from the EU's mistakes in other nuclear countries and support sustainable energy replacement power programs and both large and small scale efficiency programs. This must be combined with liberalization of the energy market, including the break up of CEZ. These are the necessary preconditions to a workable phase out program for Dukovany and the quick termination of Temelin construction.

But my advice to the Czech Republic remains the same - don't join the EU at all. The apparent advantages of wider markets and western recognition will be wiped out by a loss of political control of domestic legislation and the loss of economic control thru the unified currency and other Brussels "taxes". Just as adopting of a western style democracy did not solve all of the countries problems, joining the EU will not prove to be a magic bullet and will likely make things more difficult.