Czech government and opposition politicians welcome Supreme Administrative Court ruling on Dukovany

Marek Výborný, leader of the governing Christian Democrats and minister of agriculture, called the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS) ruling allowing the contract for completion of the Dukovany nuclear power plant to be signed good news. He said the verdict opens the way for the government to take further steps. He stressed the need for affordable energy at reasonable prices and reiterated that the offer from South Korea's KHNP was very attractive. Radim Fiala, representing the opposition SPD, recommended signing the contract as soon as possible. He told reporters in the Chamber of Deputies that blocking it would cost a lot of money and time. According to Karel Havlíček, deputy leader of the opposition ANO movement and former industry minister, the government should prevent further problems by checking the positions of all the parties involved in the project—the companies, the courts, Korea following its change of president, and the European Commission—and, if everything is in order, sign the contract.

"The government's goal is not to delay the entire completion process by even a day. We will proceed in whatever way the courts' decisions and the legal system allow," Výborný told reporters in the Chamber of Deputies.

"I have no doubt that the legal teams are working and already checking the positions," Havlíček said, adding that the way was now open to sign the contract. "But we need to review the positions, and I would not underestimate the European Commission either," Havlíček told reporters.

According to Radim Fiala, without the completion of a new nuclear power source, the Czech Republic has no bright energy future ahead, so it must negotiate with the Koreans to ensure that the agreed contractual terms remain in force and the offer does not lapse. "It was the best on every parameter, and I would even say that (the French company) EDF could not have won the tender fairly," he said. He noted that the French company's lawsuit may therefore have amounted to an act against the Czech Republic. According to Radim Fiala, the Korean company is the only one to have brought a nuclear power plant into operation in recent years, and the Czech Republic needs to have its own nuclear power by 2035 to 2037.

"The completion of Dukovany is in the public interest—in all our interests. As an MP from the Vysočina region, I also naturally recognise its regional benefits," Eva Decroix, deputy leader of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and lead candidate for the Spolu coalition in Vysočina, said on social media platform X. She is also the Civic Democrats' candidate for justice minister.

"It is good that the way is once again clear for signing the contract and completing the Dukovany nuclear power plant, after the diplomatic fiasco and the cabinet's incomprehensible amateurism and delays ahead of the contract signing," MEP and Motorists' lead candidate for the parliamentary election Filip Turek told the Czech News Agency (ČTK).

He said the new government would have to carefully ensure that the builder of the new units meets all its commitments, particularly the share of Czech industry in the project.

The government approved the planned signing of an agreement with South Korea's KHNP to build the Dukovany nuclear units on 7 May—the day the document was due to be signed. However, the Regional Court in Brno blocked the signing with an interim injunction. Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) said at the time that the government had approved the agreement in advance so it would be ready once the contract could be signed. Today, the NSS overturned the interim injunction following a cassation complaint. The case is being returned to the Regional Court in Brno. The NSS noted, among other things, that before issuing an interim injunction, a court must assess how likely it is that the lawsuit will succeed—in other words, whether it has merit. "The Supreme Administrative Court's 10th panel concluded that the lawsuit provisionally appears to be without merit," the NSS said.

The Regional Court in Brno issued the interim injunction following a lawsuit by EDF, which challenged a decision by the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition that found the nuclear tender to be in order. The court will hear EDF's lawsuit itself on 25 June.

KHNP won the nuclear tender last year, with the government preferring its offer to those from EDF and Westinghouse. The first unit at Dukovany is due to be completed in 2036. Construction of new nuclear units in the Czech Republic is expected to be the largest domestic contract in the country's history. At current prices, the cost of the currently preferred plan to build two reactors at Dukovany is 407 billion koruna.