Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-320"
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"en.20000705.9.3-320"2
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"I am pleased to have someone to reply to on this extremely important question which touches on the coherence of the policies for which the Commission is responsible, especially the coherent implementation of the Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund policies with other Community policies, particularly in the area of environmental protection and improvement.
Several Member States have yet to send in lists of zones to be protected under Directives 92/43 and 79/409, more generally known as the Natura 2000 Directives. The Commission has instituted proceedings before the Court of Justice against the Member States most in arrears. On arriving at the Commission, and because I am in charge of regional policy and also because I was Minister for the Environment in my own country and have an irrevocable passion for and commitment to these issues, I decided to take a close look at the problems of coherence, in a continuing bid to prevent and anticipate. But our predecessors, Mrs Bjerregaard and Mrs Wulf-Mathies had already worked on this and I and my colleague Margot Wallström decided to get on and regulate this procedure.
That is why, in agreement with Mrs Wallström, I submitted guidelines to the Commission which were approved on 14 March. I personally sent these guidelines to each of the Member States on 28 March. I would draw your attention to the fact that these guidelines only apply to the Member States which still have not notified the sites for protection under the Habitat and Birds directives by the time the Commission approves the programming documents for the new period 2000-2006.
This guideline calls on Member States to take immediate action to present their lists of sites protected under Natura 2000 as quickly as possible and, in addition, to undertake to ensure that sites protected under Natura 2000 are not damaged when projects cofinanced by the Structural Funds are implemented. In the event of any irregularities in connection with the conditions of implementation, i.e. if undertakings to submit lists of protected sites are not honoured, the Commission will formally notify the Member State in question of its intention to take any suitable measures immediately, in accordance with the provisions of the general regulation on the Structural Funds or the regulation on the Cohesion Fund.
Thus, the Commission will be able to have recourse, in compliance with the principle of proportionality, to provisions governing the suspension of payments, unless special circumstances apply. Because these guidelines were only recently adopted – when the Community support framework for Portugal was approved on 14 March – and the new programming period 2000-2006 is only just starting, I am honestly not in a position to quote specific examples.
I am talking about putting these new provisions into practice in specific Member States; let me also tell the honourable member that, to date, the overall situation concerning the submission of lists of Natura 2000 sites to the Commission is unsatisfactory, at least in five Member States: Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. These are the countries on which we are keeping a very close watch, as I mentioned earlier in connection with another matter."@en1
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