Abstract
This paper will briefly outline the major developments in the political debate over nuclear issues in Italy in the last two years, beginning around the time of the NPT Review Conference of 1985. The main observation which emerges from the review which follows is that, as a result of both domestic and international events, nuclear issues in general have gained considerable, and perhaps unprecedented, political attention. The crucial domestic event has been the initiation of the constitutional process for the calling of a popular referendum over whether the country should pursue further nuclear power plant construction.
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Notes
La Repubblica, September 1986, p. 3.
La Repubblica, September 1986, p. 4.
Corriere della Sera, 7 September 1986, p. 4.
La Voce Repubblicana, 16 September 1986, p. 2.
Corriere della Sera, 2 September 1986, p. 2.
’Umanitá, 17 January 1987, p. 1.
Corriere della Sera, 10 January 1987, p. 2.
For a sample of these views, see Santoro, Carlo M. and Luigi Caligaris, Obiettivo Difesa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986); and the collective volume edited by Gen. Carlo Jean, Sicurezza e Defesa (Roma: Franco Angeli, 1986).
Italy, like Great Britain and unlike West Germany, officially maintains that no US-controlled warheads or delivery vehicles would be launched from its territory without the consent of the Italian authorities, but no public sources or statements have said how Italian authorities would exercise this de facto right of veto.
China is of course a nuclear weapon state, but it presents a proliferation worry to the extent that it has been suspected of providing third countries, notably Pakistan, with nuclear weapon technology and other assistance — such as weapon designs and facilities.
The proposal argues that a fixed budget of US $30.5 million should be divided 99 per cent to 1 percent between, respectively, the 36 richest countries of the IAEA and the others. Anything above that budget should be assigned either to the repository countries of the NPT, or, alternatively, to those nuclear-weapon states which are members of the Security Council of the United Nations and have been uninterruptedly a member of the Board of Governors of the Agency.
The safeguards budget of the Agency will probably be increased in the light of the additional plants coming under its control and the better safeguarding hardware adopted. This is a measure of the Agency’s success. The Spanish—Belgian position is therefore fundamentally flawed, in that by definition the non-nuclear members of the NPT benefit from the non-proliferation regime as much as — and arguably more than — the nuclear weapon states. It is only logical therefore that all parties to the Treaty should also bear a financial burden for the safeguarding of the regime. One could argue for a redistribution of the relative financial commitments of the Agency’s members in the light of their changing economic abilities to contribute; it is quite different to suggest, as the Belgian proposal (which Italy supports) does, that somehow the benefits which the regime yields to nuclear weapon states have increased as compared with those for the non-nuclear weapon states. They have not, and therefore this cannot be a justification for additional expenses in safeguards to be imposed on the nuclear weapon states.
This year the Italian government’s contribution to the Centre has been raised from US $3 million to over $6 million (Italian Lira 9 billion) to which support for individual projects will be added on an ad hoc basis.
The three papers presented were entitled: Mutating Breeding for Crop Improvement, Food Irradiation as a New Storage Perspective, and Insect Pest Control Aided by Sterile Insect Technique.
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© 1989 Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels
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Carnovale, M. (1989). Italy. In: Müller, H. (eds) A Survey of European Nuclear Policy, 1985–87. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10813-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10813-8_8
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