Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-13-Speech-2-133"
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"en.20000613.11.2-133"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I want to begin by thanking the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and, above all, the rapporteur, Mrs McKenna, for their work on this important issue of how we in the European Union can become better at combating both accidental and deliberate pollution of the sea.
Amendment 14 and parts of Amendment 17 are aimed at improved cooperation with those countries which participate in the PHARE, TACIS and MEDA programmes. There is already a certain degree of coordination with the countries concerned within the framework of current international agreements concerning protection of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. Enlarging the proposed framework for cooperation would unfortunately lead to a number of administrative and resource problems.
Amendments 11, 20 and 21 go far beyond the framework of the proposal and, in preference to these, the Commission supports Amendment 22 regarding the reference to the polluter-pays principle.
Other amendments are aimed, like Amendment 15, at increasing the participation of the bodies affected or, like Amendment 1, concern the need to take account of international conventions for protecting certain regional seas. The Commission considers that the common position constitutes an acceptable way of meeting these justified requirements.
To summarise, the Commission can accept Amendments 16, 19, and 22 in full and Amendments 6, 17, 24 and 25 in part. Other amendments cannot be approved. Finally, I want to thank the European Parliament for the two resolutions it adopted earlier this year in connection with the consequences of the investigations into the loss of the Erika. In these resolutions, Parliament urged that this decision be adopted swiftly. It is my hope that your contribution and support today will confirm this commitment and will lead to our being able to reach a rapid decision on this issue which is so crucial to the marine environment.
The purpose of the Commission’s proposal is to reinforce and further develop the various Community measures which have been taken in this area during the last twenty years, as well as to combine them within a solid legal framework. Since the European Parliament’s first reading of this proposal, the Erika disaster has occurred in France, which is probably the accident involving marine pollution which has caused more damage than absolutely any other. I was at the scene of the disaster myself in January and was able to see the drastic consequences for human beings, animals and the environment. I also saw the considerable efforts made by hundreds of volunteers who arrived to help with the cleaning up operation. These people, I think, deserve our special appreciation.
Where preventive measures are concerned, the Commission responded directly in the shape of my fellow Commissioner, Mrs De Palacio and, on 21 March, adopted a communication concerning safety when transporting oil at sea. This report proposes a range of different measures for improving the safety of marine transport.
Even if the best preventive measures are taken, there will never be no risk at all of accidents. We therefore also need to improve cooperation within the EU when an accident does, in fact, occur. We require an effective framework of cooperation as a way of supporting and supplementing the measures taken by the Member States and of making these measures still more effective. The Erika disaster and its consequences show that we still have a very great deal to learn when it comes to dealing with major pollution accidents.
Following the first reading of this proposal in Parliament, the Commission approved or reformulated 20 of the 29 amendments you proposed. The Council has included most of these amendments in its common position. These changes have meant that the text has been improved. Above all, it has been explained what type of accidental pollution is included in the decision, for instance operational spills. The need for appropriate coordination with current international conventions and agreements relating to Europe’s seas has also been made clear. Where the amendments tabled for the second reading are concerned, the Commission is able, wholly or in part, to approve seven of these. Amendment 16 acknowledges the important role played by non-governmental environmental organisations in this area. The Erika disaster has been important in this respect, too, and shown how crucial it is for these organisations to be involved, something we also saw when birds injured by the oil had to be taken care of.
Parts of Amendments 6, 24 and 25 make the scope of the directive clear. Parts of Amendments 17 and 19 are completely in accordance with the Commission’s proposal concerning the most appropriate committee procedure. Amendment 22 introduces an important reference to the polluter-pays principle.
The remaining amendments are problematic for the following reasons. Amendment 2 and parts of Amendments 6, 10 and 24 introduce a specific reference to pollution caused by radioactive substances. Naturally, radioactive substances too are included in, and covered by, the cooperation elucidated here in this proposal. The Commission nonetheless believes that there is no justification for introducing a reference to specific substances, for this is not done in other international conventions that exist to protect the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the North Sea and to which the Community is a party. An express reference to radioactive substances would also mean complicating the legal situation because of the link to the Euratom Treaty and consequently delaying adoption of the decision. The Commission cannot therefore approve these amendments. So what kind of protection is there? There are two directives and an information system used in the event of accidents involving radioactive substances. There is Directive 96/29/Euratom on the establishment of basic safety standards. It is in accordance with this Directive, which specifies what is required in terms of joint operations in the event of a radiation accident, that the Member States are to establish action plans and develop networks and forms of cooperation. The
is a system for the rapid exchange of information in the event of a possible radiation accident. It is a system which operates 24 hours a day. There is also Directive 89/618/Euroatom on the provision of information to the general public about measures for protecting their health in the event of a radiation accident. We therefore already have a number of different tools and regulations which have bearing upon a possible accident involving a ship carrying radioactive materials. Including a specific reference in this proposal is not only unnecessary but would also lead to an unclear legal situation. Why delay this proposed legislation, which really ought already to have been in place?
Several amendments, namely 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27, deal with the question of dumped ammunition. On this issue, the Commission supported the European Parliament at first reading. The Commission nonetheless believes that the text of the common position constitutes a reasonable solution. A number of Members of the Council were not prepared to accept that reference should be made to this issue other than in a recital. It is only because I insisted on it that a reference was finally introduced in Article 1.2(b) of the common position.
Amendments 5 and 9 introduce a definition of accidental marine pollution. This question has been discussed at length in the Council, which finally came to the view that the scope of the proposed decision should not extend to include constant streams of pollution from sources on land. The Commission concurred in this, because it has never been its intention to allow this decision to embrace this type of pollution, with which we deal in various other proposals. Amendments 5 and 9 cannot, therefore, be approved."@en1
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