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U.S.-Romania $8bn deal on #Cernavoda nuclear power plant is a big news for the emerging
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇨🇳" title="Flagge von China" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von China">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇺🇸" title="Flagge der Vereinigten Staaten" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge der Vereinigten Staaten"> competition in CEE
Cernavoda was to be China& #39;s flagship energy project in the CEE. Yet linking Romania& #39;s decision solely to US pressure does not tell the full story
1/x https://twitter.com/OAG360_news/status/1315317695017959424">https://twitter.com/OAG360_ne...
U.S.-Romania $8bn deal on #Cernavoda nuclear power plant is a big news for the emerging
Cernavoda was to be China& #39;s flagship energy project in the CEE. Yet linking Romania& #39;s decision solely to US pressure does not tell the full story
1/x https://twitter.com/OAG360_news/status/1315317695017959424">https://twitter.com/OAG360_ne...
The https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇨🇳" title="Flagge von China" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von China">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇷🇴" title="Flagge von Rumänien" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Rumänien"> talks on Cernavoda project started back in 2013, with a huge initial enthusiasm on both sides. Beijing was looking for a successful showcase of Chinese nuclear project in the EU. It also hoped that it will push Romania to lead the energy dialogue within the 17+1.
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The political stakes were high, so both https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇨🇳" title="Flagge von China" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von China"> MoFA and Li Keqiang pushed China& #39;s nuclear champion CGN to execute the project. However, CGN was restrained from the very beginning. Project& #39;s commercial viability was questionable, as https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇨🇿" title="Flagge der Tschechischen Republik" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge der Tschechischen Republik">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇩🇪" title="Flagge von Deutschland" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Deutschland">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇪🇸" title="Flagge von Spanien" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Spanien">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇫🇷" title="Flagge von Frankreich" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Frankreich"> consortium left the project before.
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Cernavoda is also special. It uses a rare Canadian CANDU technology that wasn& #39;t a CGNs priority (although it possesses it from earlier co-op with https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇨🇦" title="Flagge von Kanada" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Kanada">). CGN prefers to export its own native Hualong-1 III generation nuclear reactor, but that was not an option in Romania
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CGN thus offered financing terms that were transferring risks the https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇷🇴" title="Flagge von Rumänien" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Rumänien"> side, which was not attractive at all for Bucharest. The project was still a political & #39;flagship& #39;, but the financial tug-of-war lasted for 6 years, with a growing disillusionment on the Romanian side.
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CGN eventually offered an equity investment scheme in 2019, offering to invest instead of securing loans (that were to be guaranteed by the Romanian gov). But it was too little and too late, and the joint project with CGN was soon rejected by Romania anyways.
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We& #39;ll see how the new deal with the US unfolds, but
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Cernavoda is a good case of how US-China rivalry unfolds in CEE. The US pressure on the region started relatively late, in 2018, after several years of CEEs growing disillusionment with the terms of economic cooperation that China has offered, particularly within the 17+1.
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Many governments now decide to partially sacrifice relations with China - that were not very promising anyways - to score additional points in Washington and Brussels. There are several exceptions, however, like Hungary, that still uses China to balance against the US and EU
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I won& #39;t expect CEE to close all communication channels with China. We are not in a cold war yet, despite the harsh language that the US and Chinese diplomacy use. CEE wishes to maintain its strong economic and security ties with the US (and Romania is a leader there)...
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... and is apparently willing to consolidate those ties cooperating on 5G and critical infrastructure issues, which nuclear energy is a part of. Most CEE counties also care for a unified EU stance, as it gives them additional leverage vis a vis China.
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