sion rights or discharge its responsibility onto foreign countries.
Thus, west European industries can respond to Kyoto by investing in the new member countries to increase the energy efficiency of installations of combustibles (replacement of coal by natural gas for example, without even being obliged to reduce their own consumption.
The emission rights allow countries that are below the threshold allotted to them at Kyoto to sell rights to pollute to other countries, involving exchanges of 2,345 billion dollars in total.
In Europe, starting from 2005, such systems of exchange will be possible between "clean' enterprises and polluting ones.
This new market in 'rights to pollute' puts pollution in a commodity and technological logic, makes commercial a basic human need and conceals the source of the evil, As far as energy choices are concerned, if France seems something of a fossil in the area of (non-) development of renewable energies, the country's passion for nuclear energy also influences European decisions. All the historical weight of France's nuclear policy helps to determine current orientations.
The Euratom Treaty, signed in 1957 to develop nuclear energy across the continent, has been adapted to meet new needs, although it has never been renegotiated. The Euratom budget is particularly favoured by the European Union. In 2002 the loans granted to it increased from 4 to 6 billion euros.
This budget is now being used to establish power stations in eastern Europe and its 1.2 billion euro research programme amounts in practice to a agency for the promotion of "durable nuclear energy, creating the conditions necessary for the establishment of ITER in Cadarache (at a cost of around 10 billion euros).
On the other hand, everything relating to safety smacks more of window dressing than real measures. As if by chance, in this area responsibilities are devolved to individual states.
Thus, after they were rejected by the industrialists, the European Commission proposals on nuclear safety were softened to mechanisms of self-monitoring based on reports drawn up by the states concerning their own installations, i.e. without visiting of the sites.
In addition, the management of the sums devoted to the dismantling of the power stations was also relaxed, in the name, of course, of the struggle against the greenhouse effect and for energy independence.
Hardly astonishing given that Loyola de Palacio, European commissioner for energy is an enthusiastic nucleocrat.
Plutonium resulting from US weapons is now being reprocessed in Europe, a further indication that the EU has no plans to abandon nuclear power.
Europe needs alternatives to nuclear power, with as first requirement a drastic cut in consumption and energy production.
Collaboration between countries, exchanges of renewable energy systems based on experience must develop.
The danger we face which does not respect borders, as shown by the explosion at Chernobyl, in spite of the lies of the French government at the time.