Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-145"
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"en.20000215.8.2-145"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as long as nearly thirty years ago, the European Commission made attempts to draw up a European water policy. A hundred and twenty-nine chemical substances had to be regulated. Eventually, standards were drawn up for only a dozen or so substances.
The unanimity principle was at the root of this debacle. Some seven years ago, it still looked like the European water policy was going to be sacrificed on the altar of subsidiarity. The conservative government leaders Messrs Major and Kohl decided in a cosy fireside chat at the Edinburgh Summit that it was totally unnecessary for the Spanish to receive drinking water supplies which were as good as those of the Germans or English.
This sentiment is partly reflected in the common position which came about under British Socialist Presidency. That position is like holey cheese, or to keep it the sphere of water, as leaky as a sieve. It explains the ground swell of amendments which were tabled by the Committee on the Environment: nearly one hundred amendments for the second reading. This is unusual, but most of these amendments are desperately needed to plug the holes. The dangerous chemical substances constitute a big leak. The chemical industry and, unfortunately, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers too want to draft a separate risk analysis for each dangerous substance. This is very time-consuming, and, more importantly, there is no acceptable level of pollution for dangerous chemical substances. Only the background level of the ocean is acceptable. This is what is meant by the term “close-to-zero”.
The Commission already has a list of 32 priority substances, many of which have a hormone-deregulating effect. These are so-called endocrine disrupters and cause, even in extremely minimal quantities, changes in the gender of animals and even humans, as is more and more being ascertained by scientists. This is why it is so important that the European Parliament declares itself openly in favour of the OSPAR objective of close-to-zero by the year 2020.
I would like to mention two substances from the Commission’s list: mercury and tributyl, abbreviated to TBT. On the bottom of the Wadden Sea, the values of mercury and TBT are higher than the OSPAR value, to wit, ten and one thousand times, respectively. The chemical industry and society as a whole have to learn to replace these dangerous chemical substances by harmless substitutes, and if this is impossible, to apply them in closed systems. For the substance TBT, this means that it can no longer be used as an anti-fouling substance. A sound alternative would be to clean the ship’s sides mechanically.
I would like to finish off by expressing the hope that the European Parliament will pick up once again its green image and will argue in favour of the close-to-zero option for dangerous chemical and hormone-deregulating substances by the year 2020."@en1
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