Why is this important?

Powerful voices among EU decision-makers are lending their ear to the nuclear industry lobby. They want to take us back to the nuclear age - a time when people across Europe lived in the shadows of ever more deadly reactors producing radioactive waste.

A recently leaked discussion paper from the European Commission [1] makes the industry’s ambitions clear: they want support for dangerous nuclear power, and they want it from EU taxpayers’ money.

Next week the EU energy ministers are meeting. We have to come together now to shout out loudly against nuclear power in Europe, before any decisions are made without us. Let’s tell the Commission and our ministers to drop all plans to support the nuclear power industry in their expensive gambles with our tax money - and with our health!

Background

The leaked document is meant to guide the Commission in deciding the future of the EU energy sector - but the voice of the European public has been noticeably absent from this discussion.

Nuclear power is not only a huge security risk - it’s also extremely expensive. The costs are so high that no private company would back nuclear without the promise of extensive subsidies from the public coffers. Learning from the terrible disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima [2, 3], many European countries have already pledged to phase-out nuclear power. Instead, they are supporting clean renewable energy technologies, putting the health and safety of people and environment ahead of special interests of the corporate lobby.

If we come together now before anything is set in stone and oppose the idea of backing new nuclear investments with public money, the EU decision-makers can still make the right choice and ditch all future plans to finance nuclear power. But to get there, we need all hands on deck! Europe should be leading the way in clean renewable energy and supporting small-scale, community-owned energy sources, not giving more power to corporations who happily risk our tax money and our health to turn a profit.

Sign this petition to say no to financing nuclear power with our tax money!

This petition is run in partnership with the CEE Bankwatch Network.