Even though nothing’s been decided yet, it is a project that the EU executive Commission is taking a closer look at due to possible breach of public procurement procedure.
Even though this news went under the radar in the Croatian media, both Reuters and Daily Mail reported on a statement made by the Croatian minister of entrepreneurship and trade Darko Horvat on May 5, 2016, during an economics summit in Sarajevo.
The project in question is the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary: construction of two new 1200 MV reactors and the reconstruction of two existing blocks. The construction contract was awarded to Russian Rosatom back in 2014.
“Croatia is interested in this project and we are currently exploring an optimal business model that would help meet our energy demand. We are still looking into whether it would be through financing or some other model, we haven’t decided yet”, said minister Horvat.
The entire project is currently disputed by the EU and talks are being held by the EU’s Executive Commission to try and resolve the differences considering that Hungary received a very favourably priced loan from Russia to finance the project (10 billion euros) and selected a Russian company to build the reactors causing concern that Hungary might have breached the EU public procurement rules. EU’s Executive Commission is also concerned that the Paks plant would be overly dependent on Russia.
Croatia currently meets 60% of its electricity demand from own sources while the rest is imported.
