Euratom
European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC / Euratom)
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|---|---|
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| Administrative body | European Commission |
| Official languages | 24 languages |
| Type | International organisation |
| Members | 28 EU member states 1 associated state |
| Establishment | 1958 |
| 1 January 1958 | |
| 1 July 1967 | |
The European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) is an international organisation founded in 1957 with the purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states. It is legally distinct from the European Union (EU), but has the same membership, and is governed by the EU's institutions. Since 2014, Switzerland has also participated in Euratom programmes as an associated state.[1]
Currently, its main focus is on the construction of the International Fusion Reactor ITER[2] financed under the nuclear part of FP7. Euratom also provides a mechanism for providing loans to finance nuclear projects in the EU.
It was established by the Euratom Treaty on 25 March 1957 alongside the European Economic Community (EEC), being taken over by the executive institutions of the EEC in 1967. Although other communities were merged in 1993 and 2009, the nuclear program has maintained a legally distinct nature from the European Union.
History
The Common Assembly proposed extending the powers of the European Coal and Steel Community to cover other sources of energy. However, Jean Monnet, ECSC architect and President, wanted a separate community to cover nuclear power. Louis Armand was put in charge of a study into the prospects of nuclear energy use in Europe; his report concluded that further nuclear development was needed to fill the deficit left by the exhaustion of coal deposits and to reduce dependence on oil producers. However, the Benelux states and Germany were also keen on creating a general single market, although it was opposed by France due to its protectionism, and Jean Monnet thought it too large and difficult a task. In the end, Monnet proposed the creation of separate atomic energy and economic communities to reconcile both groups.[3]
The Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom at Val Duchesse in 1956 drew up the essentials of the new treaties. Euratom would foster co-operation in the nuclear field, at the time a very popular area, and would, along with the EEC, share the Common Assembly and Court of Justice of the ECSC, but not its executives. Euratom would have its own Council and Commission, with fewer powers than the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community. On 25 March 1957, the Treaties of Rome (the Euratom Treaty and the EEC Treaty) were signed by the ECSC members and on 1 January 1958 they came into force.[4][5][6]
To save on resources, these separate executives created by the Rome Treaties were merged in 1965 by the Merger Treaty. The institutions of the EEC would take over responsibilities for the running of the EEC and Euratom, with all three then becoming known as the European Communities even if each legally existed separately. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union, which absorbed the Communities into the European Community pillar, yet Euratom still maintained a distinct legal personality.
The European Constitution was intended to consolidate all previous treaties and increase democratic accountability in them. The Euratom treaty had not been amended as the other treaties had, so the European Parliament had been granted few powers over it. However, the reason it had gone unamended was the same reason the Constitution left it to remain separate from the rest of the EU: anti-nuclear sentiment among the European electorate, which may unnecessarily turn voters against the treaty.[7][8][9] The Euratom treaty thus remains in force relatively unamended from its original signing.
Since the end of World War II, sovereign European countries have entered into treaties and thereby co-operated and harmonised policies (or pooled sovereignty) in an increasing number of areas, in the European integration project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne). The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU)—the principal framework for this unification. The EU inherited many of its present responsibilities from the European Communities (EC), which were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.
| Legend: S: signing F: entry into force T: termination E: expiry de facto supersession Rel. w/ EC/EU framework: de facto inside outside |
 European Union (EU)
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[Cont.] | ||||||||||||||||
| European Communities (EC)
|
(Pillar I) | |||||||||||||||||
| European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) | [Cont.] | |||||||||||||||||
 /  /  /  European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
|
||||||||||||||||||
| European Economic Community (EEC) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Schengen Rules | European Community (EC) | |||||||||||||||||
| 'TREVI' | Justice and Home Affairs (JHA, pillar II) | |||||||||||||||||
 /  North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
|
[Cont.] | Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC, pillar II) | ||||||||||||||||
  Anglo-French alliance |
[Defence arm handed to NATO] | European Political Co-operation (EPC) | Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP, pillar III) | |||||||||||||||
 Western Union (WU)
|
 /  Western European Union (WEU)
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[Tasks defined following the WEU's 1984 reactivation handed to the EU] | ||||||||||||||||
| [Social, cultural tasks handed to CoE] | [Cont.] | |||||||||||||||||
| Council of Europe (CoE)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Entente Cordiale
S: 8 April 1904 |
Davignon report
S: 27 October 1970 |
European Council conclusions
S: 2 December 1975 |
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- ^ a b c d e Although not EU treaties per se, these treaties affected the development of the EU defence arm, a main part of the CFSP. The Franco-British alliance established by the Dunkirk Treaty was de facto superseded by WU. The CFSP pillar was bolstered by some of the security structures that had been established within the remit of the 1955 Modified Brussels Treaty (MBT). The Brussels Treaty was terminated in 2011, consequently dissolving the WEU, as the mutual defence clause that the Lisbon Treaty provided for EU was considered to render the WEU superfluous. The EU thus de facto superseded the WEU.
- ^ Plans to establish a European Political Community (EPC) were shelved following the French failure to ratify the Treaty establishing the European Defence Community (EDC). The EPC would have combined the ECSC and the EDC.
- ^ The European Communities obtained common institutions and a shared legal personality (i.e. ability to e.g. sign treaties in their own right).
- ^ The treaties of Maastricht and Rome form the EU's legal basis, and are also referred to as the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), respectively. They are amended by secondary treaties.
- ^ Between the EU's founding in 1993 and consolidation in 2009, the union consisted of three pillars, the first of which were the European Communities. The other two pillars consisted of additional areas of cooperation that had been added to the EU's remit.
- ^ The consolidation meant that the EU inherited the European Communities' legal personality and that the pillar system was abolished, resulting in the EU framework as such covering all policy areas. Executive/legislative power in each area was instead determined by a distribution of competencies between EU institutions and member states. This distribution, as well as treaty provisions for policy areas in which unanimity is required and qualified majority voting is possible, reflects the depth of EU integration as well as the EU's partly supranational and partly intergovernmental nature.
Achievements
In the history of European regulation, Article 37 of the Euratom Treaty represents pioneering legislation concerning binding transfrontier obligations with respect to environmental impact and protection of humans.[10]
Presidents of the EAEC
The five member Commission was led by only three presidents while it had independent executives (1958–1967), all from France:
- Louis Armand (France) 1958–1959 – Armand Commission
- Étienne Hirsch (France) 1959–1962 – Hirsch Commission
- Pierre Chatenet (France) 1962–1967 – Chatenet Commission
See also
- EU Directorate General Joint Research Centre – often incorrectly referred to as Euratom due to EURATOM being its origin.
- Energy Community
- Energy policy of the European Union
- History of the European Union
- Institutions of the European Union
- Nuclear energy in the European Union
- The nuclear part of the Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development, the European Union's chief instrument for funding research.
References
- ^ Document 32014D0954, Council of the European Union. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
- ^ Fusion for Energy
- ^ 1957–1968 Successes and crises CVCE
- ^ A European Atomic Energy Community CVCE
- ^ The signing of the Rome Treaties CVCE
- ^ Drafting of the Rome Treaties CVCE
- ^ Euratom: nuking Europe's future Greenpeace International, 9 July 2003
- ^ One hundred civil society groups say abolish Euratom! Friends of the Earth Europe, 3 March 2003
- ^ Euratom reform
- ^ Heuel-Fabianek, B., Kümmerle, E., Möllmann-Coers, M., Lennartz, R. (2008): The relevance of Article 37 of the Euratom Treaty for the dismantling of nuclear reactors. atw – International Journal for Nuclear Power 6/2008
External links
- European Atomic Energy Community website
- Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM)
- Documents of the European Atomic Energy Community are consultable at the Historical Archives of the EU in Florence
- History of the Rome Treaties Online collection by the CVCE
- European Commission Fusion Research
- European Commission Fission Research
- Use dmy dates from May 2013
- International nuclear energy organizations
- International organisations of Europe
- Energy policies and initiatives of the European Union
- European Union and science and technology
- Organizations established in 1958
- European Atomic Energy Community
- Intergovernmental organizations established by treaty
- 1958 establishments in Europe