More states challenge EU emissions caps
Latvia and Lithuania have become the latest countries tolegally challenge the European commission over cuts to national allocation plans (Naps) for phase II of the EU emissiontrading scheme (EU ETS), bringing the total to seven.
Latvia said on 31 July that it would lodge a complaint with the European court of justice by 26 September.
Lithuania should join the International Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) Decommissioning Support Fund (Ignalina IDSF) as a new member by mid-2007 under the draft amendment to the fund's regulations submitted to the Assembly of Contributors to Ignalina IDSF held in London in December.
"It means that Lithuania will be able to get more information and will have a greater say since it would have a vote," Arturas Dainius, the Economy Ministry Secretary, told BNS.
The Bulgarian government has agreed to close four of the six nuclear reactors at its Kozloduy plant by 2006 at the latest, the European Commission said today. The accord means all eight reactors classed as dangerous and "unupgradeable" that are located in countries due to join the EU will be decommissioned within a decade.
The EU has repeatedly stressed that the closure of the four Kozloduy reactors by 2002 would be a condition of Bulgaria's eventual entry into the bloc. But the Bulgarian government recently passed a law which would have seen the last reactor decommissioned only in 2010.
