Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-15-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20010315.3.4-014"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we have an excellent framework directive on water, stipulating that water management should be conducted in terms of individual river basins. This sound ecological principle is enshrined in European law. The Spanish government tried in vain to block this framework directive on water because of its National Hydrological Plan. This megalomaniac and wrong-headed plan of the Aznar government aims to pipe water from the River Ebro over 900 kilometres down the coast to Southern Spain. The cost will be in excess of EUR 18 billion between now and 2008. The Aznar government wants Europe to give an annual subsidy of EUR 1 billion. This injudicious plan contravenes both the spirit and the letter of the framework directive on water. It contravenes the habitat directive on 82 counts and the birds directive on 108 counts.
Of course the Aznar government will label this plan a national economic priority, but it will also have to prove to the European Commission that there are no alternatives. However, there
alternatives! Desalination of brackish and salt water will be 50% cheaper for Central and Southern Spain than the Aznar plan, and apart from that is much more flexible, small-scale, and demand-oriented. Another method would be to introduce cost-covering prices for water and to irrigate plants individually rather than submerging the fields and allowing between 90% and 95% of the precious water to evaporate. Israel provides a good example of this. This is why the European Commission should reject the Aznar plan and stop the flow of EU funds into it.
This Aznar plan is 200 times worse than the plan for an industrial estate between Aachen and Heerlen. On the German-Dutch border the European Commission has rightly cut off the flow of EU funds because of the threat to the hamster population. Surely it cannot be that the European Commission as the Guardian of the Treaties is operating a double standard?
Is the Commission aware that the Aznar government asked 83 Spanish scientists to carry out studies into this injudicious water plan and that that same government is now refusing to publish results it deems unfavourable? Does the Commission approve of 60 villages in Spain being wiped off the map? Does the European Commission find it acceptable that a landslide could dislocate the operation of the Itoiz dam and threaten the Ascó nuclear power station?"@en1
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