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Opinion
March 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
around certain EU requirements governing public tenders.
Kristýna Križanová, adviser to the vice-minister, Section of Energy, at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, tells bne IntelliNews that the Czech gov- ernment has been holding talks with the Euro- pean Commission about seeking an exemption to tender rules for the electricity market, though the issue “is getting really complicated and we are not sure we will be granted the exemption... Right now, we are in the process of responding to ad- ditional questions from the commission and we have a deadline of the end of March before anoth- er round of talks with the commission”.
This latest project is actually the Czech Republic’s second attempt to complete a nuclear tender, after the previous one to build two more reactors at the Temelin nuclear plant was finally put out of its misery in 2014, the victim of a series of over- optimistic financial forecasts and incompetent official decisions.
Fearful of a repeat of that fiasco, a key part of this new project is getting Brussels to agree to ex- emptions to the strict rules that govern public tenders in the bloc, downgrading the issue of price in favour of other criteria such as technol- ogy, to make the process less complicated and drawn-out.
If this effort doesn’t succeed, other options will be considered, including a direct government-to-gov- ernment deal like the €12.5bn one that Hungary agreed with Russia to expand its Soviet-era nu- clear power plant at Paks after receiving approval from the European Commission in March 2017. Brussels received commitments from Budapest over limiting distortions of competition and ac- cepted its arguments that only Rosatom could meet the technical requirements.
“We are now assessing other possible options and that is a legitimate example of how to proceed, but we have no preferred option right now,” says Križanová.
Just as in Hungary, a direct government-to-gov- ernment deal would undoubtedly favour Russia and its nuclear holding Rosatom over Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co, China’s General Nuclear Power, the US’ Westinghouse Electric Corpora- tion, France’s EDF, and a joint venture of Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France’s Areva called ATMEA.
As well as the nuclear technology at CEZ’s plants already being Soviet, Russia has the option of of- fering financing for the new reactor at Dukovany, as well as for a possible three more reactors to be built at an expected total cost of around $30bn.
The Russian bid also has strong political backing, following the re-election of the openly pro-Rus- sian President Milos Zeman in January and the victory of the Ano party of billionaire Andrej Babis in October 2017’s parliamentary election.
Babis, who is currently acting prime minister
as he tries to form a coalition government, has been dogged by allegations about his links to the communist-era security services and the murky circumstances that enabled him to take over in the early 1990s Agrofert, a subsidiary of Slovak group Petrimex, the monopoly importer of oil and chemical products to Slovakia, that has since be- come the source of his vast fortune.
Zeman, meanwhile, has said he would not
be opposed to a nuclear deal similar to that which Hungary struck for Paks, while local weekly Respekt detailed several visits last year that Zeman’s top aide Martin Nejedly made to Moscow, where he held a series of meetings with influential officials close to the Kremlin, including Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev. Nejedly, who used to run the local branch of Russian oil major Lukoil, has refused to discuss any meetings he might have held in Russia, insisting they were private affairs.
Industry sources in Prague also point to several deals in the nuclear supply chain that suggest Russia is positioning itself to win the tender.