The Limits of Conditionality: Nuclear Reactor Safety in Central and Eastern Europe, 1991-2001
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The Limits of Conditionality: Nuclear Reactor Safety in Central and Eastern Europe, 1991-2001 JOHN VAN OUDENAREN European Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA
Abstract. The increasingly prominent role of conditionality as a tool for promoting economic and political reform in transition countries has provoked debate among academics and policy-makers about when and under what circumstances conditionality is effective. Since the early 1990s, the West has provided financial aid to countries operating unsafe Soviet-built nuclear reactors on the condition that these countries close down these reactors. Analysis of developments in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Lithuania demonstrate that this use of conditionality has not been successful. More recently, the EU has set conditions regarding the closure of unsafe reactors in connection with these countries’ bids to become EU members. This use of conditionality appears to have been more successful. However, there is still a possibility that one or more of these countries will enter the EU operating a “high risk” reactor, which raises the prospect of “intra-EU conditionality” coming into play after accession.
Introduction Conditionality has become an increasingly prominent feature of international politics in recent years. Once mainly associated with the IMF’s macroeconomic stabilization programs, since the collapse of communism the EU, NATO, the OECD, and the Council of Europe have used conditionality to promote a variety of political, economic, and social objectives – everything from abolishing the death penalty to privatizing national monopolies. With increased use has come increased controversy. Critics of conditionality argue that it often is applied in ways that ride roughshod over national sovereignty, ignore local circumstances, and impose economic hardship. Others note the frequent inability of recipients of conditional aid to fulfill commitments to international donors. Even when measured by its own narrow objectives, they argue, conditionality often fails. Although the debate over conditionality has produced a voluminous academic literature, one area that has not been analyzed is nuclear safety – conditional programs initiated by the G-7 and other institutions to secure the closure or upgrading of Soviet-built nuclear power plants in central and eastern Europe. At first glance, such programs appear to confirm the failure of conditionality. Notwithstanding a widespread expectation in the early 1990s that the most unsafe plants would be rapidly decommissioned, more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall some
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John Van Oudenaren
65 Soviet-designed nuclear reactors continue to operate.1 A closer look, however, suggests that conditionality has been at least partially successful. Although it is impossible to prove, the absence of another Chernobyl-type disaster may be the result of safety upgrades made under pressure from Western donors. A few of the more dangerous reactors have been shut down and most governments are committed to phasing out
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