Each EU member state has the right to its own energy policy and other countries must respect this principle, Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said on Thursday after a meeting of the Visegrad Group and Austria in Prague
PRAGUE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2020) Each EU member state has the right to its own energy policy and other countries must respect this principle, Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said on Thursday after a meeting of the Visegrad Group and Austria in Prague.
"Each country that is a member of the European Union has the right to its own energy policy, and its decision on how to provide industries and the population with electricity should be respected by other EU states," Pellegrini said at a press conference adding that energy issues caused the most intensive debates during the meeting.
According to him, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary associate their energy prospects with the development of nuclear energy, but Austria has been long expressing concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants existing in neighboring states and opposing the construction of new power units.
Pelligrini added that Slovakia will continue developing the nuclear energy industry.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on his part said that for Vienna it was important to prevent a situation when the European Commission starts to compensate for some countries the coal phaseout by financing nuclear energy development.
