The complaint claims that the Slovak authorities used "market-distorting measures" to push through "what would otherwise have been an unviable and unattractive project".

"What this case highlights is pretty simple: when you take dirty tricks out of the equation, nuclear power is expensive, unreliable and underperforming," said Greenpeace EU dirty-energy campaigner Jan Haverkamp in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the commission made no comment on the matter, saying only that the European competition watchdog had not yet received such a complaint.

Slovakia's biggest electricity producer, Slovenske Elektrarne plans to build two reactors at an existing nuclear power plant at Mochovce in the west of the country.

The company, which Italian power giant ENEL has a 66-percent stake with the remaining shares owned by the state, decided last year to complete work on the two mothballed blocs by 2013 with investment expected to total around 1.81-1.84 billion euros (2.37-2.41 billion dollars).

The work had stopped 16 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the former communist regime and ahead of Slovakia's independence in 1993 following the split of Czechoslovakia.

Haverkamp said "the pre-Chernobyl 1970s design of the new reactors raise serious security and environmental questions.

"The evidence gathered by Greenpeace clearly points towards illegal competition practices. We call on the commission to put an end to the nuclear protectionism of Slovakia," he added.

ENEL will be able to operate Mochovce at artificially lowered costs and decommissioning funds in Slovakia "will not be sufficient to fully cover the future decommissioning and waste disposal costs," Greenpeace said.

The green activists claim that Slovakia manipulated the figures by artificially lowering and capping levies paid towards decommissioning and waste funds.

On top of this, the group claims, the Slovak state "plans to massively increase contributions by all electricity consumers towards the so-called historic deficit' for decommissioning and waste management.

The planned new nuclear capacity forms a fundamental part of the Slovak government's plans to boost electricity production to power its booming economy with the country facing the prospect of becoming a net electricity importer from next year.

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