The EP Committee on Budgets has adopted a position in favor of the allocation of EUR 300 M to Bulgaria as nuclear decommissioning aid.

The decision has brought Bulgaria one more step closer to the getting this additional compensation for the shutting down of its four 440 MW nuclear reactors at the Kozloduy NPP, which was initially negotiated in September 2009.

The news comes a day after the decommissioning aid proposal passed another test when on Wednesday the EP Environment Committee defeated the report of the German MEP Rebecca Harms demanding that the allocating of the EUR 300 M to Bulgaria be made conditional on its starting to build a nuclear waste storage site, and that the funds be used solely for projects related with the Kozloduy NPP.

The proposal for Bulgaria’s additional nuclear decommissioning aid still has to be passed by the EP Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy, and by the entire European Parliament. Bulgaria is expected to get the first EUR 75 M from the package in June 2010.

The EU Committee on Budgets has said in its decision that the proposed decommissioning aid for Bulgaria is in accordance with the EU financial framework for 2007-2013.

At the same time, the MEPs from the Committee are calling upon the European Commission to consider the fact that the money allocated to Bulgaria over the Kozloduy NPP, as well as other sums connected granted over political considerations are depleting the reserves of the EU budget. They are asking the EC to revise the 2013 budget framework.

Bulgarian MEPs, Ivaylo Kalfin from the Party of European Socialist, and Nadezhda Neynski, from the European People’s Party, who are members of the EP Budget Committee, and have been the rapporteurs for their respective group on the nuclear decommissioning issue.