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Polish Briefing 20 August, 2019 9:00 am   
COMMENTS: Mateusz Gibała

Polish Briefing: Talks about the coalition against the NPP in Belarus

What goes on in Poland on the 20th of August.

Piotr Naimski takes part in talks about the coalition against the NPP in Belarus

An energy conference  under the patronage of the President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus with the participation of the government plenipotentiary for strategic infrastructure Piotr Naimski will be held on August 22-23. One of the topics will be a coalition against the Ostrowiec Power Plant in Belarus.

The event will also be attended by Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Eastern Policy, Development Cooperation and Economic Diplomacy Marcin Przydacz.

Participants of the conference are to celebrate the memory of the late Senator John McCain and discuss topics in the field of energy security, including the possibility of a coalition against the nuclear power plant built by the Russians in Ostrowiec in Belarus, which Lithuanians perceive as an economic and environmental threat. Poles are not interested in importing energy from Ostrowiec Power Plant, but they do not consider it an environmental threat. They plan to build an NPP that they think is safe.

The talks will be part of the preparations for the visit of energy secretary Rick Perry announced for October.

Latvia will not buy energy from the Belarusian NPP

Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins denies that Riga has decided to buy energy from a nuclear power plant built in Ostrowiec, Belarus.

Earlier, Lithuanian officials and Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda expressed regret and concern over Riga’s decision to open the Latvian-Russian border with Russia for electricity trading. In this way, they reacted to reports from the 15min.lt portal, which suggested that the Latvian government had already made a decision in this matter.
According to Karins, there was a misunderstanding. – I am afraid that the President of Lithuania was probably not fully informed about what is happening. I can say it again, the Latvian government has not decided to buy energy from Belarus. This is not the subject of talks at all – he said.

Until now, Latvia and Estonia have imported energy from their eastern neighbors through Lithuania. At the same time, the Lithuanian parliament adopted regulations preventing cross-border energy trade with Belarus in order to prevent energy supplies from the nuclear power plant being built in Ostrowiec. To reduce the risk of Vilnius’s decisions, the Latvians agreed to trade energy with Russia in case of a lack of needed volumes of energy.