London (Platts)--28Feb2011/1108 am EST/1608 GMT
Germany's main opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party, will this week file legal challenges against the nuclear extension bill to the country's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, the parties' parliamentary chiefs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Juergen Trittin, said Monday in Berlin. Five opposition-led states--including the country's most populous state of North-Rhine-Westfalia as well as Berlin, Bremen, Brandenburg and Rhineland-Palatine--have Monday filed a separate challenge against the nuclear reactor lifespan extension, asking the court to decide whether the government had the right to push through the legislation without the consent of the upper house. Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government last year pushed through a plan to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years. The center-left parties--now in opposition--decided a decade ago to shut down all nuclear power plants in Germany by 2021. Merkel bypassed parliament's upper house, the Bundesrat, which represents Germany's 16 states and where the government lacks a majority, to reverse the atomic phase-out law. The five state governments argue in their legal suit presented Monday to the court that the upper house should have been consulted, German news agency DPA said. ANTI-NUCLEAR PROTEST CONTINUES The nuclear extension plan weighed on the popularity of the coalition last year and stirred large-scale protests, which could resurface and hurt Merkel's chances in upcoming regional elections, including in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg on March 27. According to press reports, several thousand opponents of nuclear power protested against the government's atomic policy on Saturday, while Greenpeace activists Monday scaled the cooling tower of the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant near Stuttgart. Plant operator EnBW said Monday in a statement that a member of the plant's security staff got hurt during the protest action, but that operations at the plant are not affected by the action. EnBW's Neckarwestheim-1 reactor in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is Germany's oldest reactor still in operation.--Andreas Franke, andreas_franke@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Power in Europe. See more information at http://bit.ly/PowerinEurope