Proposition 55K0635

Projet de loi portant confirmation de l'arrêté royal du 15 octobre 2018 fixant pour l'année 2018 le montant de la contribution de répartition visée à l'article 14, § 8, alinéa 16, de la loi du 11 avril 2003 sur les provisions constituées pour le démantèlement des centrales nucléaires et pour la gestion des matières fissiles irradiées dans ces centrales.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Michel Ⅱ

Submission date

Oct. 18, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

nuclear power station nuclear energy nuclear policy radioactive waste decommissioning of power stations

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld N-VA LDD MR

Abstained from voting

Groen Vooruit Ecolo PVDA | PTB VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Malik Ben Achour (PS | SP) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

Nov. 21, 2019 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I refer to the written report. This is a very simple bill and I don’t think it needs much explanation.

Mr. Speaker, I do not, in itself, disagree with the rapporteur when she says that it is a simple bill that is here for ratification. But it’s not because it seems simple, that it’s simple.

The draft law concerns the contribution paid by nuclear operators for the nuclear power plants Doel 3, Doel 4, Tihange 2 and Tihange 3. That contribution takes into account the windfall profits they make on depreciated nuclear power plants.

The reason why it is here, and we have been talking about it extensively in the committee, is because it is about a tax authority and tax authorities are reserved for the legislator. The King cannot simply adopt a royal decree for this, this must be ratified here in Parliament.

I have already said it in the committee: Parliament is not a voting machine. The fact that a royal decree is transmitted to Parliament for ratification should not be a reason for not exercising our inspection task.

I note that our control powers here are not so obvious. The determination of the contribution is made on the advice of the CREG, based on research and studies of the CREG. These are documents that are not available to this Parliament, while the CREG is, of course, an institution controlled by the Parliament.

This is a very relevant debate, as the contribution from 2020 will be determined in a different way. The minimum amount is no longer laid down in the law, but will be calculated using a specific formula. Consequently, the big question is and remains whether the CREG today has sufficient data and insight to carry out that calculation and to ensure that the nuclear windfall profits are effectively eliminated and flow back to where they belong, namely: to the taxpayers, to all of us.

We will therefore add more strength to our questions in the coming weeks. Check if there is sufficient objectivation of costs. Does the CREG have enough handles to make that calculation correctly?

Colleagues, you know undoubtedly that in the last legislature, my group has always been reluctant on this point. We are and continue to believe that the redistribution contribution collected is structurally too low. That is why our group in the past has always refused to approve the ratification at this point. Today, of course, we are in a completely different political situation, because the government in ongoing matters does not have a majority in this Parliament.

That explains, Mr. Speaker, why our group will abstain from this proposal. It remains important for us that the amount, even if it is too low, is effectively collected and that the nuclear operators, in particular ENGIE and EDF, are obliged to pay the amount effectively. That is why we will remember on this point later.

This draft law, which has been repeated annually since 2017, this time for the ratification of the Royal Decree establishing for the year 2018 the distribution contribution, is a result of the law of 25 December 2016, which amended the law of 11 April 2003.

Approximately three years ago, here took place the technical high-profile of colleague Wollants, who is unfortunately absent today, and who, on behalf of the then majority, defended the aforementioned draft law outstandingly. The creation of this law has had many feet on earth. I refer to the judgment of the Constitutional Court, the opinions of the State Council and the countless observations of the CREG.

I will not dare to engage in a technical debate about the amount of the repartition contribution and the whole issue of Tihange 1 in the past. Unlike my colleagues at sp.a, who have been saying this for three years, I will not argue that the level of the nuclear interest rate is not the result of an objective analysis of the operators’ victories. Even the arbitrary definition was used for this purpose.

Colleagues, it is a fact that the Swedish majority was tired of the trials and disputes from the period before 2016. It is also a fact that the amount of the amount is determined by the contribution capacity of the relevant power plants. It is a tax measure relating to the profit in the light of the fact that the central plants concerned have been depreciated before the expiry of the expected operating period. It is also a fact that during the period of the introduction of the law the price of electricity had dropped sharply. The decline of that pure commodity caused the nuclear interest rate to be captured in a different way.

Of course, we should not be naive. The law of 25 December 2016 does not float in the air empty. It didn’t just come there. The background of all this is the historic agreement between the government-Michel I and Electrabel of 2015. The option of reducing the profit margin of the previous year by 38% fits into this agreement.

The CREG was assigned the task of calculating each year the profit margins of the power plants, to update every three years the parameters necessary for calculating the fixed and variable costs and to ultimately propose a minimum amount for the repartition contribution. When determining the profit margin of the operator, the evolution of the cost index, the production volume and, not insignificantly, the price of electricity is taken into account.

Collega Van der Straeten, it will indeed be ⁇ exciting next year because the CREG has the difficult task of proposing a new minimum amount. That amount, unlike so far, will no longer be fixed. It remains very difficult to see here as a simple member of parliament. You said that our control power is not obvious. The Legal Service of the House asked a question in which it was answered that the article on the duty of secrecy of Members of Parliament is at issue here. We can discuss this further in the committee.

Since there is still no new government, I would like to get into the reality of ENGIE Electrabel.

Colleagues of the N-VA, in the past there have been numerous attempts, especially at the Flemish level, to make more competition from the government ENGIE Electrabel. For example, I refer to the establishment of the Flemish Energy Company in 2012, after its announcement in 2009. It was also your intention to compete with Electrabel in terms of production. That was not realistic, of course. The objectives have been updated for several years. The company has been a subsidiary of the PMV for several years, with the main purpose of purchasing and reselling energy to Flemish government agencies. It is a kind of shopping center.

I notice it – it’s actually surreal – but it proves ENGIE’s omnipotence in the free market. Did you know that two years ago ENGIE concluded two very important contracts for energy supply with the Flemish Energy Company? The reality of ENGIE Electrabel is always there. The shadow is always there and will continue to hang over this assembly for years to come.

Mrs. Minister, last year you were a little bit angry at Electrabel. Remember the unworking power plants and the unavailability of most nuclear power plants in this country, exactly a year ago. I quote you: "Electrabel is fully responsible for the situation due to poor planning of maintenance and repairs. Today’s problems are rooted in the fact that structural investments have been insufficient for years. Our country bears the negative consequences of the fact that the decision center is not located in Belgium. My Richter scale is already at 3.”

These were punitive sentences from you, exactly a year ago. You even missed out that the sale of nuclear power plants abroad may not have been the best decision of the government-Verhofstadt. I found those statements very interesting. They floated, of course, also against the backdrop of the repartition contribution.

The shadow of ENGIE Electrabel, Mr. Speaker, will also be present here in many debates in the coming years. I also refer to the Minister’s intended strengthening of the legal framework around nuclear provision, say the SYNATOM dossier. Last week we were able to notice during the oral questions that a lot of factions have no confidence in the operator.

My party thus asserts that ENGIE remains in a strong position. If the new government fails to attract sufficient new production capacity to replace the nuclear power plants, the successor or successor of Ms. Wilmès will have to beg on his or her bare knees to ENGIE Electrabel to keep Doel 4 and Tihange 3 open any longer. At the same time, this life extension would be accompanied by very heavy investments, which ENGIE Electrabel will only want to do if the regulations are adjusted and new clarity for them is created. In other words, colleagues: investment guarantees. There may even be price guarantees. Earlier this year, it became clear that ENGIE does not expect that Doel 4 and Tihange 3 will actually close in 2025, but actually expects that both reactors will have to run twenty years longer. Then, of course, we go back to the topic of today: the nuclear interest rate.

It becomes even more complex, colleagues, when one realizes that Electrabel is not only the largest producer of classical electricity, but also the largest producer of renewable energy in this country. Your murdered enemy, colleagues from Green, Ecolo and PVDA, the multinational ENGIE, is therefore also engaged in renewable energy, energy storage, research and development and energy efficiency. The company thus plays a crucial role in the energy transition in this country. That, for example, it proposes and installs CO2 savings and associated competitive solutions with its customers from a profit perspective, one can hardly blame a company.

I look forward to the developments in the coming months and years. Several weeks ago, you stressed that any decision regarding the possible extension of the life of a limited number of nuclear power plants should be balanced against the security of supply, the costs for consumers, the impact on the environment and compliance with international agreements.

In any case, my party continues to believe that in the development of carbon-free energy in Belgium a combination of forces between nuclear and renewable energy is possible. Clearness about the capacity problem and the cost of the CRM mechanism, in particular the financing KB, must now come quickly.

The Flemish Interest will abstain, as in the law of 25 December 2016.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, last week I spoke here about the non-closing legislation on the disconnection or dismantling of the nuclear power plants in our country.

I have submitted to the committee a bill on the very limited liability of our nuclear power plant operators in the event of a nuclear accident. This parliamentary initiative fits into a vision that the nuclear power plant operators in our country should take some financial responsibility. On the one hand, because they are allowed to use nuclear power plants that have been paid off for more than ten years by the payers of the many energy factories in our country. On the other hand, for the security risk, however small, that exists for our society.

We will not approve this KB today. We find the nuclear tax too low. The Flemish Interest colleague may refer to the CREG. He forgets to say that the CREG said in 2011 that the calculation is much too low. They find that the nuclear interest rate is much higher than the one applied today.

There has been a lot of disagreement about this and the legal proceedings have indeed been stopped. Was that courageous? The price we pay for this is a billion euros. We are going to raise 700 million euros today. Four years ago this amounted to 1.7 billion euros. That is a difference of one billion euros. I find it a little witness of political courage to come here to say that it is now arranged, that we can be confident, that we have the money. For a billion euros, you can do a little effort, especially in these times of budgetary tightness. That is our position.

You understand that it is impossible for us to agree with this design.

Mr. Minister, last week I interpelled you on this point, saying that the citizens of our country were wondering whether they would have to pay the bill for the dismantling of nuclear power plants and the waste management. In its 2018 annual report, the Nuclear Provision Commission had pulled the alarm bell by stating that, I quote: “The risk is considerable that the Belgian population will have to bear enormous costs in the future.” According to another study commissioned by Greenpeace, the cost of dismantling nuclear power plants and managing used fuel should increase and the 2003 law would be insufficient. It can be read in this study: "The law of 11 April 2003 does not provide for the potential situation in which the owners would not have sufficient funds to honor the costs; therefore, the parent companies cannot be held responsible for this." I would like to remind you that the total provisions will have to be at least 25 billion euros. Some even talk about $37 billion. Today, there are only 11 billion in cash.

The requested payments are decreasing. In 2017, it was still 191 million and, after the application of the degressive mechanism, 161 million. In 2018, it increased to 177 million and, after applying the degressive mechanism, to 150 million – 11 million fewer than in 2017.

Furthermore, these amounts are determined by the CREG, for which parliamentary control cannot be properly exercised. You will answer me that it’s because it’s sensitive commercial information but it makes us trouble having to make a decision about it without having an informed opinion.

Despite all this information, Mrs. Minister, you do not know how to decide on the increase of nuclear supplies, while they are insufficient and they are decreasing. You said it in The Echo last week, and you repeated it to me here last Thursday.

You reject the responsibility on the UNDRAF which must fix the means necessary for nuclear supplies. We disagree with this vision. It is the responsibility of policy makers to establish the regulatory framework that will ensure that nuclear power plant operators take over the dismantling and waste management until the end.

Moreover, in 2018, at the time of the adoption of your first reading bill, according to the Echo, you continued to discreetly negotiate with ENGIE-Electrabel around the provisions already made. I quote: "Leaks on the content of these discussions have even caused fears of a complete detricotage of the text." I wonder what we are voting for today. In what context is all this?

For us, assuming our political responsibilities means setting the necessary regulatory framework for nuclear power plant operators to assume their own financial responsibilities. Otherwise, it will be the taxpayers who will have to pay for the dismantling and management of nuclear waste. This would not be fair because Electrabel pays virtually no taxes and its parent company, ENGIE, makes profits that amount to billions of euros each year, in particular thanks to the Belgian nuclear power plants.

That is why the PVDA-PTB will abstain from this bill. We will not vote against because, even if the amount of provisions is completely insufficient, having that money is always better than nothing.

Mrs. Minister, we invite you, as well as the next government, if it comes one day, to rethink this amount strongly to increase for the coming years.

I would like things to be clearly fixed. But I hear, in the last two interventions especially, a message that is not clear and that is even totally wrong.

While the law of 11 April 2003 concerns not only the legal framework relating to nuclear provisions, of which you have spoken abundantly, we are here in another place of the law relating to the particular taxation which applies to the operator Electrabel and which is intended to collect, above the usual taxes – in particular the corporate tax – the surplus profit earned by this company which managed to obtain at one time to amortise very quickly, in twenty years, all the infrastructure and to be able to generate profit, without the amortisations, since they were fast, after this period of twenty years, come to burden the profit it would obtain from the operation of its infrastructures.

You are talking about nuclear provisions, a matter that is the subject of a completely different chapter of this law of 11 April 2003. This confusion can be really problematic because the nuclear provisions are made up of money paid in addition to the taxation we are talking about today by the operator and whose increasing steps are fixed between the Commission of Nuclear provisions, the ONDRAF and the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control in a completely different order than the taxation of which it is concerned here which, of course, is fixed, as it must be according to our Constitution, by the royal power that is the Belgian State.

You should know that nuclear supplies – and I didn’t stop you last week to tell you that you would find the solution yourself, but it isn’t – are increasing by more than 1 billion a year since these increases take place.

( ... )

Absolutely at all. We are talking about 1 billion a year, which is several billion, Mr. Hedebouw. These amounts are paid by the operator to cover the costs necessary for the dismantling of nuclear power plants and the treatment of highly radioactive waste.

I therefore draw your attention, Mr. Verduyckt, Mr. Warmoes, to the fact that we are talking about a royal decree which fixes the amount in a virtually mechanical way, as the State Council reminds, which says that, since it is a regulatory matter, the executive power has no longer any marge of manoeuvre and only fixes the contribution through the application of a formula contained in the basic law, all the elements of which have been debated, voted and published, and the basic amount of which must, for the next three years, be fixed by the CREG.

It is therefore this rent or this distribution contribution that is a specific tax, which is to be paid by the specific taxpayer, namely Electrabel and EDF which have in common, by the shareholder's kiss, certain prerogatives on the unprolonged power plants, that is, out of Tihange 1, Doel 1 and Doel 2 that they have a quite special tax regime that is called the fee that we have already talked about. All this should not be confused with nuclear supplies.

I ask you, therefore, to review, in the light of the explanations I have just given you, your judgment to bring money back into the state treasures.

This is the state, and not the SYNATOM fund intended to accommodate those nuclear supplies that will one day have to serve, and this to avoid the state and the citizen having to pay exactly anything, in terms of the dismantling of nuclear power plants and the treatment of highly radioactive waste.

I simply ask you to review your judgment and/or to review your argument to confirm in the law a royal decree that must come into effect before the end of the year, in order to bring back to the state treasures the revenues that are necessary for it and correspond to the capture of the surplus profit recorded by Electrabel through the operation of the infrastructures of which the group is owned and operates.

As a reminder, the provisions for dismantling amount in 2014 to 819 million euros lodged in the SYNATOM fund, and whose operator is in any case liable for nuclear provisions; in 2015, to 599 million euros; in 2016, to 1 319 million euros; in 2017, to 1 115 million euros; and in 2018, to 1 112 million euros.

These are the steps to increase the nuclear provisions settled by Electrabel for the provisioning related to the dismantling and treatment of highly radioactive waste. This is a special taxation. Do not confuse them! I thank you.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker.

First, on my part, no one in Parliament argued that the contribution should not be collected. No one on that side has complained. On the other hand, it is different. Our Flemish Interest colleague has said that he would vote against the contribution. However, no one on my side has indicated this.

I thought I understood it that way.

At least on my part, no one in Parliament has stated that.

Second, what has been unanimously stated on my part in the Parliament is that we are all convinced or feel that the mechanism contained in the law may be insufficient. This discussion was also held in Parliament. It is not because now there is a calculation that must be confirmed, that we should not look forward, and that we should not be united in our political force, in order to continue to investigate the system included in the law and to continue to check whether the CREG effectively has all handles, in order to come to a proper calculation.

Therefore, in addition to simply approving a contribution to be collected for the current calendar year, it is also necessary to have a fundamental debate, which belongs to the legislator, about whether the calculations and the laws we have today provide sufficient handles to be able to estimate the victories.

In this regard, the Commission still has a long way to go. We must have progressive insight in this matter and learn from the experiences of the past. Together with and on the initiative of the CREG, we must examine and ask how it can better help us to ensure that we can get to a good deflation of the victories.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Van der Straeten, I had made it very clear that the Flemish Interest would abstain in the vote.

However, I can reassure you at the last point of your reply. We support you in this. You have a point on the CREG. That is not a single problem.

There was also a question, to which the Parliament’s Legal Service gave us an answer and an opinion.

I will explain very briefly why exactly we will abstain at the vote. After all, I have described the reality of ENGIE Electrabel in this country in a rather journalistic way.

We will abstain from voting because we are not very satisfied with that multinational in the light of the many crashes of November 2018, which were a truly low point. This has also been confirmed by the Minister at various times. I have quoted her through various quotes.

I have indeed given a journalistic flower reading, which I will do here often.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond very briefly, because we are accused of confusing a number of matters.

I will be very clear. Indeed, I removed the words "nuclear commission" to indicate that our group is concerned about it and is actively engaged in it.

Today we are voting for something different. I know very well that we are now talking about the repartition contribution. That is the money that goes to the treasury. Nuclear provision is a provision that we establish in order to dismantle the nuclear power plants later. However, we may reasonably be concerned if the Commission asks to take care of nuclear supplies, because the legislation is not fully concluding. She advises us to resolve this, so that there will be no money too short.

Today we are talking about the repartition contribution. We oppose that it is so low, but we will abstain, because we want to make sure that at least a redistribution contribution is charged, even if we find them very low. The billion euro I just talked about is indeed a billion euro less in the treasury.