Activists react well to nuclear exchange

Date:17/07/03

ANTI-nuclear activists and green groups were pleasantly surprised by a last-minute change made by the Convention on the EU's future to its draft constitution for Europe.

The activists' prayers that the 1957 Euratom treaty be kept out of the new constitution seemed answered when the Convention, in its final proposals for consideration by EU governments, suggested the treaty should remain a separate legal entity.

Designed to provide a secure framework in which to develop nuclear energy, Euratom has been widely criticized as outdated and biased.

But Convention spokesman Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut has said the decision to keep the treaty out of the constitution was not necessarily anti-nuclear.

The idea was "simply to leave the subject untouched". Still, the move is set tohelp environmental groups in their campaign to scrap Euratom altogether. Continuing the separate legal personality for the treaty leaves it "in limbo" and "paves the way for further marginalization", several NGOs said in a joint statement.

Countries might now be able to leave Euratom without leaving the EU, they added.

Envirnomental groups and anti-nuclear lobbyists have welcomed the European Convention's decision to keep the 1957 Euratom treaty out of the new constitution.