EURATOM and Nuclear Safeguards

EURATOM is the organisation which is today entrusted with the task of implementing nuclear safeguards in the European Community. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also conducts its own safeguards verification activities in the territories of the Community Member States. But as a result of developments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is EURATOM which has the initial responsibility for ensuring effective safeguards implementation in this particular region.

The political movement to create a European Community, at times passionate and always controversial, had its roots in the midst of Europe’s most traumatic period, the Second World War. Because of these origins this movement has been concerned solely with the region of Western Europe, as at the end of the war Europe was divided politically between East and West.

This chapter focuses on the early postwar nuclear policies of the United States. This may seem surprising in a book about EURATOM and nuclear safeguards, but the United States was instrumental throughout EURATOM’s ‘embryonic’ phase as a source of political (as well as later, economic and technical) support. The United States was also the world’s first NWS and a major actor in the early nuclear weapons proliferation debate. As the focus of much of this debate centred on Western Europe, the United States also saw in EURATOM certain non-proliferation potential as well.

Throughout the period that plans for EURATOM were under discussion the Soviet Union made no secret that it was distrustful of the motives behind the setting up of this organisation. To quote Kelly on this point:

The Soviet Union from the very beginning never liked EURATOM. They saw it as a device whereby the West was going to allow the West Germans access to nuclear technology in order to build a bomb. This view coloured their relationship with EURATOM for many years.¹

This chapter addresses several questions associated with nuclear safeguards that are inherent in the United States-EURATOM nuclear transfer agreement. The communique, issued following the visit of ‘Three Wise Men’ to the United States in early 1957, had outlined the basis for the nuclear transfer agreement between the interested parties. In normal circumstances the United States would have insisted, under the terms of its bilateral nuclear transfer agreements, that its personnel be allowed access to EURATOM’s nuclear industry so that the necessary verification checks could be made. But the countries involved in the formation of EURATOM were far from keen to allow the United States such extensive safeguards rights over the proposed nuclear transfer agreement. Instead, they wanted to set up a regional safeguards system of their own.

As a result of the wide-ranging political factors outlined in previous chapters Louis Armand’s hope for a grand nuclear organisation that would be the catalyst for the regeneration of Western Europe never materialised. EURATOM’S ‘embryonic’ phase had ended with a Treaty establishing a nuclear organisation in Western Europe.¹ But this organisation was not vested with the kind of remit envisaged by Armand and his followers. When EURATOM eventually began operations in 1958, it therefore did so on foundations that were politically, far from solid.

This second section deals with the early operational stages of the EURATOM safeguards system, termed here as EURATOM’s ‘fledgling’ phase. This phase coincided with the European Community’s research and early industrial nuclear programmes, a period during which the beginnings of the industrial nuclear infrastructure in the Community was put in place.

The next major development in the EURATOM safeguards calendar, both politically and technically, was the opening up for signature (1968) and ratification (1970) of the NPT.¹

In May 1970 the IAEA Board of Governors established a Safeguards Committee to draw up details of the safeguarding arrangement between the IAEA and each NNWS.¹ The Safeguards Committee was set up with the explicit intention of representing as many opinions from the respective Member States as possible. In conformity with this principle, the participants were also drawn from a wide variety of occupations (diplomats, lawyers, chemists, physicists, etc.) and collectively they represented a very broad spectrum of political opinion.²

In INFCIRC/193 the formal basis which enables the IAEA to carry out inspections in the EURATOM NNWS is provided by Article 70.¹ Other Articles in the document further define these inspection activities more precisely. In all, INFCIRC/193 entitles the IAEA to make three different types of on-site inspection: ‘ad hoc’; ‘routine’; and ‘special’.

This short chapter sets out to develop further the safeguards picture in the European Community brought about by the NPT. The principal objectives of the chapter are essentially twofold: the first is to provide an analysis of the so-called ‘voluntary offer’ safeguards agreements concluded between EURATOM and the IAEA in respect of France and the United Kingdom, the EURATOM NWS; the second is to address the question of Spain’s entry to the European Community and the safeguards issues raised by this.

By the 1970s the nuclear trade rivalries noted by Walker and Lonn-roth between the United States and the West European nuclear suppliers like France and West Germany, had become well entrenched. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s the United States had dominated the nuclear export markets, by the 1970s this hegemony had come under severe challenge by other nuclear suppliers, notably from the two West European supplier countries already mentioned plus Japan.¹ The erosion of United States influence led to a structural change in the global nuclear industry. As a result of this structural change, the United States was no longer in a position to rely on unilateral influence alone to shape global nuclear export policies, especially those of the West European suppliers.

Since the NPT came on the agenda the focus of the IAEA-EURATOM relationship has centred on the question of which organisation should have primary responsibility for implementing safeguards in Western Europe, the IAEA or EURATOM. Both organisations have made forceful claims to this role. Although neither organisation wanted to be seen to be in any way undermining the NPT, neither did they seemingly want to give too much ground to the other organisation.

This analysis of the development of EURATOM’s nuclear safeguards operation has shown that it evolved in four relatively distinct phases: an ‘embryonic’ or ‘ideas’ phase (Part 1); a ‘fledgling’ phase (Part 2); a ‘transition’ phase (Part 3); and a ‘mature’ or NPT-phase (Part 4).