Bulgarian Parliamentary Committee to Discuss N-Plant Referendum
The Parliamentary Energy Committee will discuss Tuesday the issue of a referendumon nuclear energy in Bulgaria.
The MPs will review the two proposed versions of the question for the referendum– "Should Bulgaria develop nuclear energy through the construction of a nuclear power plant at the site in Belene?" and "Should Bulgaria develop nuclear energythrough the construction of a new nuclear power plant?".
A petition initiated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) collected over 700 000 signatures in support of the first question.
The subsequent inspection of the petition found 543 639 valid signatures, enough to make the vote irreversible.
The second proposal was submitted by Dobroslav Dimitrov from center-right ruling party GERB and a group of MPs.
President Rosen Plevneliev organized political consultations on the issue of thereferendum.
At that point, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov declared GERB's support for thereferendum, despite "the patently unconstitutional wording of the question put forth by BSP."
Plevneliev suggested that the name of the concrete project had to be removed from the question so as to ensure that the referendum would involve national policies in general.
Later on, Bulgaria's President said that the question could be referred to theConstitutional Court.
The GERB government scrapped the Belene NPP project in March 2012 on the grounds that it was economically unfeasible.
Text and photo: novinite.com
(23.10.2012)