Link to the study - European Parliament - Europa

Policy Department D: Budgetary Affairs
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The Government of the Slovak Republic notified a draft act amendi ng article 7(4) and (5) of the
Act 2006 in 2012. According to these draft amendments from 2013 onwards the operator needs to pay
the levy to the Ministry of Economy. The Ministry of Economy oversees and coordinates the fund in
the Slovak Republic (Aid 2013).
4.3.2. Comparison and evaluation of the national organisational structures with best
practice
In all three countries Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia the national structures are clear, straightforward
and transparent.
Based on our findings in chapter 3 a major difference between EWN and the three countries was that
in the case of EWN the German Finance Ministry as the sole financial contributor took over the
complete control over the activities of the company. The basic structure of the management level at
EWN was already changed from the start to better fit to the decommissioning project needs. And
EWN was, from the beginning, tightly controlled by the supervisory board, in which the Ministry
acted. All strategic decisions of the company’s management were intensely discussed and approved
in that way.
The administering of the implementing organisation by the responsible Ministries in case of Bulgaria,
Lithuania and Slovakia was not as close as it was at EWN. First of all, the powerful operating
organisations kept their traditional role, resisting against any external influence to change their
approach. Secondly, a possible reason for the different role of the national control organisation in the
three cases was that the external control institutions (Donor Assembly, EBRD as fund manager and
project presenter) were more expected to take over that role, just because these controlled the major
part of the resources. The design of the national implementation organisation, its internal structure,
the configuration of its management level, its self-confidence and the quality and performance of
work on this decisional level was to be defined and controlled by the national authority supervising
the organisation. But this task was not adopted by the responsible Ministries: there were neither any
incentives nor any requirements to take over that new role. Their focus was rather on achieving the
necessary resources to finance the decommissioning than on finding the mode of changing
management, planning, project and work structures.
The fact of not identifying, finding and taking their role in setting up an organisational framework in
the early phase of decommissioning to adapt their national setting to the new decommissioning task
delayed the process further. In the view of the national administrations it was rather expected from
the external control institutions to take this responsibility. But as those external institutions were
objectively not responsible to control the inner design of the decommissioning organisation,
substantial delays in the setup of the responsible organisations were characteristic. So it took several
years until the national structures reached today’s more appropriate state. As an example the
establishment of the managing organisation in Bulgaria is shown in Figure 33.
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