Prague wants to streamline a project to build a new reactor at the Dukovany nuclear power plant, 50 kilometers north of the Austrian border, to replace a Soviet-era reactor. That means persuading Brussels to exempt the project from strict E.U. rules on government bids. If it fails, the Czech government is considering striking a nuclear deal with Russia along the same contentious lines as Hungary, which signed with Moscow last year.
The second option would raise trouble for the Commission, which reluctantly approved Hungary’s Paks II nuclear project last year following long negotiations with Budapest. Kristýna Křižanová, adviser to the deputy minister of industry and trade, said talks with Brussels are “getting really complicated and we are not sure we will be granted the exemption.”
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