In the past couple of weeks, there's been this infighting of sorts between the EU and Germany. For an American, it's an odd fight.
The EU was basically designed to take the various members of the union....onto another level of 'togetherness' and 'unity'. As long as the EU body votes in favor of something, and the member states cooperate.....things are fine. At the point where a member state goes onto to do something that possibly violates the EU rules....it drags the enforcement arm into a fight.
The issue? After the Japanese nuclear plant episode, Germany got a bit hyper about operating nuclear power plants. It was an odd change in character. No other European country went to the extremes of planning changes....as Germany did. The end of the planning effort simply spelled out the end of nuclear power in Germany, and a major push on alternate sources of power production.
Journalists will write various stances on the German change. Some articles will be in complete agreement. Some will spell out the economic problems of this sudden change. Some will talk about implications for decades to come.
To make Germany's anti-nuclear power plant plan work....the government came to one simple conclusion. They had to inject German federal money....into the system. You can call it grants, or tax credits, or whatever. Basically.....money came out of one German government pocket....and went into various alternate power developmental projects. Some are wind-related....some are solar-related...some deal with steam.
The number thrown around for credits and grants for 2014? Some journalists quote thirty billion Euro that the German government will spend in some fashion. The thing is....the money gets spread out. Heavy-users of electrical power? They get a piece of the money.
As you can figure.....the EU folks are watching this and believe it's a violation of their general rules. If the money had been solely for developmental stages or such....the EU might have just gone on and just noted some simple negative comments. In this case.....big-name German companies.....who use massive power in their production cycle....got the money as well. For the EU ethic's folks.....you can't do this legally under EU rules.
Some folks think that the EU is after Germany because of the high road that Germany has been occupied upon for the last couple of years and the economic 'push' by Germany against EU states. An attempt to slam Germany on this funding issue? Yeah....it could be that simple.
So the EU has said that they'd like to investigate all of this. From the highest levels of the German government.....this isn't being received well. They've kinda said....they won't cooperate. You can imagine this EU investigative team arriving somewhere, and demanding access to records, and the Germans grinning because they just won't hand over the records.
The problem with all this.....is that it will get deeper into newspapers and news media within Europe, and eventually Germany. The journalists are in a tough spot. They usually are anti-nuclear power when they do articles like this. To flip so quickly from nuke power to recyclable power? You'd have to pull a couple of tricks out of the hat....which are probably not acceptable by today's ethics rules. How would a journalist write a friendly piece out of this mess.....to help the German government? That's the million-dollar question.
So, for the next six months....you will hear about this investigation by the EU and continue to hear the German talk over 'no' investigation.
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