Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-03-Speech-4-019"
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"en.20000203.1.4-019"2
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"Mr President, today the European Parliament must face up to real responsibilities. We have to work out what we are going to do with the millions of vehicles we abandon each year. In some of our Member States, voluntary environmental agreements have already been signed to ensure that our ditches, canals and fields are not filled with these ugly and dangerous wrecks, inhabited occasionally by an alarmed farmyard chicken.
I come, of course, from a country that is proud of its car industry and of its commercial success both in Europe and in third countries. I can gauge its importance for my country’s international reputation. I know of the proactive attitude of the European car manufacturing industry which has set up an extensive research programme to outline a national information system for dismantling end-of-life vehicles.
I am aware of the difficulties the Council experienced in finding a compromise. That is why, today, we must be understanding alchemists, concerned for our environment. This will either be the century of waste management or it will not. As far as I am concerned, at least, the principle of ‘polluter pays’ must be applied. The car industry, increasingly more respectful of the environment, has, I am sure, anticipated this kind of increasing awareness. Indeed it is accepting its responsibilities.
It is the Member States, however, who will have to implement this directive, and let us beware of going into too much detail because the industrial traditions, the demolition and crushing sectors vary according to whether you are in Italy or in Finland. I am opposed to making the car owners liable. The men and women on the move throughout Europe pay for their car and their catalytic converter, pay their national taxes and the tax on fuel and are therefore already paying a high price for their magnificent machine and their freedom of movement.
It would certainly be unwise for my fellow Members in the major groups of the federalist tendency to seek to make the European Parliament unpopular in this way by creating a liability shared between the owner and the manufacturer. How, furthermore, can a fund be created which will pay for vehicle recycling and manage operations within Europe. Who is to pay for recycling the car I bought in France if I register it in Belgium? Which national fund will pay for my end-of-life vehicle? Let us beware, too, of worrying the world of business with the legal uncertainty of an unacceptable retroactive application. It is not our intention to start a punitive legislative campaign here today, but to continue on our present course, advocating sustainable development."@en1
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