Parbeszed: Paks expansion must be stopped

Parbeszed’s Benedek Javor noted at an online press briefing that an amendment of earlier agreements on the project was announced after Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s visit to Moscow on Tuesday. While Szijjarto has not made the details public, based on interviews and press reports in recent days, the new construction project may involve Rosatom abandoning its role as the main contractor, he added.

The Paks 2 project in its current form “is clearly a failure” and the government “admitted this by reviewing the contract”, he said.

Javor said a loan agreement was linked to a 2014 Russian-Hungarian nuclear cooperation deal, and parliament must approve any amendment of it.

If the amendment involves changing the main contractor, then its effects could be “catastrophic”, he said. It would mean the government taking all of the project’s financial and legal liabilities from Rosatom and burdening Hungarian taxpayers with it, he added.

Consequently, the Russians, as suppliers, would not bear any responsibility for cost increase in the project, and the cost could grow from the original 12.5 billion euros to “unforeseeable heights”, he said.