Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-144"
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"en.20000215.8.2-144"2
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"Mr President, the ecological disaster in the Danube reminds us of how closely linked all the countries of Europe are and how important water is to us all. Discharges from chemical factories in my own constituency in the north-west of England will end up on the beaches of mainland Europe. This brings home the connections which bind us together.
This framework directive is intended to paint the broad brushstrokes of the policy for the next decades and there has been much panic over the details. It is important for us to remember that this is a framework. These brushstrokes are indeed very broad. It is easy for individual countries, for individual sectors of industry, to escape the effects which have been painted to us in recent days. There are many opportunities to hide. The reality is that the details of this legislation will be set out in daughter directives in months and years to come. That is the time to debate some of these problems of detail. The broad principles are surely ones we should be able to accept – the broad principles that we wish to reduce hazardous waste leaking into the groundwater, the broad principles that we should be aiming to ensure that chemicals, which we all need in society in all circumstances, should not be finding their way into our water system.
There is a chemical factory in the north-west which wrote to me to say that we must vote against this legislation. I would have to ask them what chemicals they are putting into the water supply at the moment and why they are not broadcasting to all the residents in that area exactly what they are doing. This is something that they prefer to avoid doing.
The principle also concerns water charging. The basic understanding which many of us now share is that we need to introduce environmental taxation to encourage conservation, to use the carrot-and-stick approach to make best use of our assets so that we do not add to the pollution or loss of a valuable resource like water.
I want to refer to the political position here. The common position has weakened the stand taken by Parliament at first reading. Some of the NGOs would say that the directive as now framed is worse than useless. It is a retrograde step. This is an opportunity for us to improve the situation. We need to get ourselves into a position of conciliation. We have seen vote after vote lost. Measure after measure has come out of the Environment Committee. We have failed to achieve a qualified majority. Our attempt to improve the environment of Europe has failed. We need to get into that conciliation position. We need, at the end of the day, to ensure that we end up with a sensible, balanced policy of real improvements at a reasonable cost."@en1
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