Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-13-Speech-1-086"
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"en.20000313.4.1-086"2
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"I hardly need to emphasise the importance of tropical forests at a global level given their influence on climate patterns, the large proportion of the world's biodiversity that is contained within them and of course their importance to the livelihoods of millions in developing countries – fuel wood being an obvious example. For these and other reasons, Europe's citizens rightly expect the Community to support actions to conserve and sustainably manage tropical forests.
I say tropical forests, but in fact a new feature of this regulation compared to the previous one is that the scope of the regulation now covers all developing countries and hence now includes countries such as South Africa, China and the Mediterranean and Middle East regions. The regulation also makes specific reference to the needs of indigenous and forest-dependent people and the need for gender considerations to be taken into account. We have just discussed the environment regulation and the comments I made then on a number of horizontal issues are also largely applicable to the forest regulation. For this reason, I will be brief.
With reference to the amendments listed in the Fernández Martín report, the Commission's position on the main horizontal issues is as follows. Financial reference account: the Commission accepts the compromise figure of EUR 249 million over seven years proposed in Amendment No 9. Comitology – the Commission supports in principle Amendment No 11 but prefers the wording of Amendments Nos 13, 14 and 15. The amendments propose a split comitology arrangement with annual guidelines and priorities being subject to a management procedure while Council would examine projects over EUR 2 million under an advisory procedure.
Duration of the regulation: in order to avoid conciliation, the Commission's position is not to support Amendment No 12, which places an unlimited duration on the regulations. In our view the seven-year duration proposed by Council represents an acceptable compromise.
Bank guarantees: the Commission does not support Amendment No 8 concerning bank guarantees for reasons outlined earlier. We are against special provisions being made in specific budget lines as this goes against our common objective, namely, to simplify and unify administrative procedures. Furthermore, following a Commission decision in 1999, we consider that the issue has been largely resolved.
Concerning the other amendments, our position is as follows.
The Commission welcomes and supports Amendments Nos 7 and 10. Amendment No 4 is considered acceptable. We do not support Amendments Nos 2, 3 and 6 as we consider that the concepts have been taken into account elsewhere in the regulation following the first reading. Hence, in the interest of clear and concise legislation, we would prefer that these amendments be dropped. Amendment No 1 is not supported as in our opinion it brings little added value. Given the Council's negative position on this amendment, the Commission would favour it also being dropped. Finally, we do not support Amendment No 5 as the term 'serious doubts' is considered to be too subjective, making it very difficult to implement the regulation. Furthermore, the objective of this amendment, namely, to avoid projects with negative social, cultural or economic or environmental effects, is addressed in Article 4 (5) on impact assessments."@en1
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