[en] Nuclear safety in the candidate countries to the European Union is a major issue which needs to be addressed in the frame of the enlargement process. The Heads of the nuclear safety Regulatory Bodies of the European Union member states having nuclear power plants, i.e. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom thought it was their duty to offer their assistance to the European Union institutions at a moment when the expansion of the Union is being considered. As a consequence, they decided to issue a report giving their collective opinion on nuclear safety in those applicant countries having at least one nuclear power reactor (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia) and covering: the status of the regulatory regime and regulatory body and the nuclear power plant safety status. This report is based on the knowledge they gained through multilateral assistance programmes, in particular the Phare programmes, and also through bilateral contacts. It must be stressed that in some cases, they recognised that their current knowledge was not sufficient to express a clear and exhaustive opinion. Also, it should be pointed out that the judgements are based on widely applied Western European design standards for the defence-in-depth and associated barriers. Quantitative comparisons of Probabilistic Safety Assessments have not been used as the available results are of widely different depth and quality. They also recognised that such a report could only present the situation at a given moment and they intend to periodically update it so as to reflect the changes which may occur in these countries. At this stage, the report does not cover radioactive waste or radiation protection issues in any detail. After they had taken the decision to issue this report, they decided to create an association, the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA) in order to increase the co-operation between them. Switzerland has been invited to join WENRA and has accepted. WENRA has the following objectives: to develop a common approach to nuclear safety and regulation, in particular within the European Union, to provide European Union with an independent capability to examine nuclear safety and regulation in applicant countries, and to evaluate and achieve a common approach to nuclear safety and regulatory issues which arise