The dispute between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia regarding the planned disposal of radioactive waste at Trgovska Gora will be heard in international institutions for the first time.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Geneva, based on BiH’s application that Croatia has violated the International Convention on Transboundary Pollution. The BiH Expert Team is, with cautious optimism, satisfied that the case has finally come before international bodies.
Just a few hundred meters from the border with BiH, in the immediate vicinity of Novi Grad, Croatia plans to store low and medium radioactive waste. We are talking about waste from the Krško Nuclear Power Plant and that from hospitals, industry and the military. About 250 thousand inhabitants of BiH are in the zone of potential influence.
“We didn’t participate in this production, we didn’t enjoy the benefits of that electricity, which is really big, and we can’t in some way in the future be hostage to the whole story,” said Miroslav Drljača, the mayor of Novi Grad, reports RTRS.
Representatives of some of the world’s largest environmental organizations believe that the fear in Bosnia and Herzegovina is well-founded.
“I think this is a typical project of a dangerous nuclear facility that states like to place near the border of another state. Yes, because it is dangerous, and it is easier to deal with political pressure in those regions that are usually economically and politically weaker,” said Patricija Lorenz, consultant for nuclear security (Environmental Network “Friends of the Earth – Europe”).
One of BiH’s key objections is that its experts did not participate equally in field research, which Zagreb denies. Because of this, BiH reported Croatia for violating the Espoo and Aarhus Conventions. The hearing before the Espoo Convention Committee in Geneva is scheduled for Thursday.
“Croatia received a lot of questions to which it needs to answer. We received several questions to which we have already prepared an answer. These days we will carefully analyze each of those questions, and then we will assess which questions will be answered by, say, for example, Zoran Drača, who is the best expert when it comes to, I would say world-class, since he remedied the consequences, worked on the remediation of the consequences when it comes to Chernobyl,” said Borislav Bojić from the BiH Expert Team for Trgovska Gora.
The decisions of the Espoo Convention Committee have the force of recommendations, but can represent legal, political and international pressure
“We need to be clear, the Trgovska Gora case does not end there. Neither in a good way, nor in a bad way. What is very important is that we point out in the right way the omissions that Croatia had and the deliberate violations that were committed in the case of Trgovska Gora. Geneva is the place where we will point out those huge procedural errors and that is something that must be done in the best possible way”, stated Mario Crnković, a member of the BiH Expert Team for Trgovska Gora (Association “Green team”, Novi Grad).
After the hearing, the Espoo Convention Committee will prepare a proposal of recommendations, which will be sent to BiH and Croatia for comment. The proposal will be considered at the beginning of December at a meeting of all signatories to the Convention. In the meantime, Croatia prepared a key document for the continuation of the procedure – an environmental impact study, which should soon be submitted to Bosnia and Herzegovina. institutions, and who will then send their remarks, he writes Klix.
