Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20001003.4.2-146"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the EU’s enlargement, to include ten Eastern European countries and the two Mediterranean countries Malta and Cyprus, is upon us. Negotiations involving the European Commission and the governments of those twelve countries are now under way. Three major stumbling blocks in these negotiations are the environment, agriculture and free access of employees of the new countries to the labour market of the old Fifteen.
With regard to the environmental aspects, I have drawn up a report on behalf of the Committee on the Environment. Only once before has Europe faced a similar dilemma. This was nearly ten years ago when the GDR became part of Germany.
The European Commission then spelled out that the internal market rules would apply as from day one of the GDR joining the EU. Very often, Europe’s environmental rules were subject to five-year transitional periods. In that situation, West Germany backed the former GDR financially on a massive scale, by no less than DM 150 billion annually. The ten new countries in Eastern Europe can only dream of having a rich sugar daddy such as that.
At present, the EU spends approximately EUR 500 million annually on the environment in the twelve new countries together. In order to meet all 200 environmental EU requirements, all Eastern European governments together need to spend another EUR 120 billion. In this light, it is understandable that they are applying for longer transitional periods of ten to fifteen years in order to accommodate those expensive environmental requirements. This means that the environment in Eastern Europe will not undergo any noticeable improvements until fifteen to twenty years from now. This is an unacceptable period of time.
It is logical that the Environment Ministers of the new countries will be putting the brakes on after their countries have joined the EU, whether their political persuasion is green or conservative. They will argue that they should first of all introduce the old EU environmental requirements before Europe adopts new environmental requirements or tightens existing ones. In order to solve this dilemma, the Committee on the Environment has proposed that the inexpensive cheap environmental requirements, such as environmental effects reporting, environmental information, animal welfare, the habitat and bird directives, should be effective from day one and that five-year transitional periods should be introduced for the expensive environmental requirements.
Environmental aid will need to double in order to help the new countries. If longer transitional periods prove necessary after all, the European Commission should table these requests to the Environmental Committee. The proposal which has attracted most controversy is that which stipulates that the old, soviet-type nuclear power stations have to be closed down from day one. In the negotiations held so far, it has been agreed to leave this type of extremely dangerous power station, such as that in Lithuania, in operation until 2009."@en1
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