Going forward into the past: the resurrection of the EURATOM Treaty

Unless they are timed out, there is a tendency for treaties and the organisations that are associated with them to be recycled and rejuvenated to fit with a contemporary problem. This is because there is so much political effort involved in creating the ‘new’ that the ‘old’ continues to appear attractive. In March 2007 the Member States of the EU adopted a new Energy Policy for Europe (EPE). The objective of this strategy is to achieve a secure, competitive, and sustainable and carbon free energy supply for the EU27 – an increasingly urgent objective in the light of high levels of EU dependency on imported energy resources and the impact of energy use on climate change. Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs had stated in spring 2006 that the nuclear energy industry should participate in the debate about shaping the new sustainable EPE. This paper argues that if the EU is to achieve the policy coherence that is a requirement of the development of sustainable and secure energy policy there is an urgent need for reform of the Treaty which created the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) in 1957. In an ideal world the EURATOM Treaty should be repealed. However, the failure to take the opportunity to do so during the Convention on the Future of Europe and the subsequent problems associated with the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty suggest that such radical reform is unlikely for the foreseeable future. The EU’s Member States have neither the capacity nor the political will to take the appropriate steps to deal with a Treaty which is based on a traditional statist policy paradigm in contrast to that of market functionality now characterising EU energy policy. Therefore the anomalous EURATOM Treaty will live on and be adapted to meet the regulatory requirements of the nuclear industry in the new millennium