Text tabled : A7-0360/2011

  Sergio Paolo Francesco Silvestris (PPE), in writing. – (IT) The most authoritative international organisations have predicted that, given the expected tripling of worldwide demand for electricity by 2050, installed nuclear capacity will also have to increase threefold by 2050. Hence, the need to design and build, straight away, third-generation plants to address the scenario predicted over the coming decades.

This also means that nuclear research must be stepped up. I believe that the concrete development of research in all scientific fields, through the commitment of a large number of researchers inspired by a burning passion, is an absolute priority and one in which the institutions should invest with courage, in the knowledge that this is the field on which much of Europe’s future, as well as the security of supply of future energy sources in general, and nuclear energy in particular, at global level, depends. A Europe that fails to invest in research is a Europe that fails to invest in the future.