The Social Democratic leader has said on Friday that Brussels appears to be planning to give Lithuania a deadline for closing INPP and that the country has been criticized for severe delays in the decommissioning process.
"Yes, the amount is too low. If this decision is eventually adopted, that means that Lithuania will have to find the remaining funds in the future. This is not a small amount and that definitely will not be easy," he told reporters.
Butkevičius said that there have been discussions in Brussels about giving Lithuania a deadline for completing the plant's decommissioning process.
"I've heard - I don't know if a decision has been made already - that there are efforts to set a certain deadline for Lithuania or to adopt a document saying that Lithuania must close Ignalina plant. At the moment, I don't have any final information or documents. There was such talk coming out of Brussels," he said.
The would-be prime minister says that Brussels criticizes Lithuania for its failure to use the funding allocated so far and for Ignalina plant's decommissioning projects running years behind schedule.
"On Thursday, the European Commission publicly said some angry words at Lithuania. Two very important things were identified. First, that Lithuania fails to absorb the money within the timeframe and, second, that it is late with certain works. I think that this signal is highly worrying and that we must find out why this (outgoing) government has not coped with these tasks. The European Commission doesn't like to make such statements. If it does so and, what's more, does so publicly, these are exceptional cases," he said.
The latest EU budget draft provides for 460 million euros in financing, in real terms, for Ignalina plant decommissioning until 2020, more than double the previous proposal of 210 million euros, and does not call for discontinuing EU funding for the project after 2017, as proposed earlier.
However, the latest proposal is still well below the 770 million euros requested by Lithuania. The country would need another 1.5 billion euros until 2030.
Decade-long delay
If Lithuania receives only 460 million euros for the closure, the plant's reactors will not have to be mothballed, but their final decommissioning will be delayed for at least ten years, says the chief executive officer of the facility.
"This is good news, compared with the initial proposal of 210 million euros. This increase to 460 million euros would help avoid a critical scenario which would mean practically halting all dismantling work and carrying out mothballing work for several decades. Certainly, this sum is not sufficient to keep to the current plant, which is to completely close the plant by 2029. We estimate that this date would then be pushed back to 2038," Žilvinas Jurkšus told BNS.
