Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-087"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20011001.5.1-087"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
". – Mr President, first of all I should say that we are not trying by any means to suggest that people across Europe should go to bed at a certain time or laugh in certain places only, or to harmonise any of the different customs and cultural traditions in Europe.
Within the Council an agreement was reached to use common indicators only for the purpose of strategic noise mapping, while the need for further harmonisation of indicators was postponed for consideration in the review proposed in Article 11. Therefore, I am afraid we cannot support Amendments Nos 11 and 34. However, since the directive now limits itself to strategic noise mapping, it is logical to support the principle of Amendment No 12. Besides this, we also welcome Amendment No 36, which seeks to reduce the flexibility and the definition of the Lden noise indicator, thus making for more comparable results.
On public information, Amendment No 22 requires that the information to the public be published on the Internet within two months. We welcome the principle of this amendment, but the dissemination of information to the public should not be limited to the Internet. As for the review clause under Article 11 of the proposal, Amendment No 24 seeks to delete the reference to 'different climates and cultures'. Owing to strong concerns expressed in the Council by Member States, we cannot support Amendment No 24.
In the annexes, we can support in part Amendment No 26, which seeks to make compulsory the provision of financial information on action plans. Of the three types of financial information concerned, we would support the provision of budget information being made compulsory, while the others are more difficult to obtain.
Finally, we support Amendments Nos 30, 31, 32 and 35 to Annex VI, which partly restore the original provisions proposed by the Commission on the technical specification of strategic noise maps.
I thank the European Parliament and the rapporteur, Mr de Roo, for the detailed consideration given to this proposal and the helpful amendments which have been contributed. They have undoubtedly strengthened the proposal and also improved its quality.
The proposed directive on the table today, following on from our 1996 Green Paper, aims to develop a new noise policy to tackle noise which affects people, and not only noise from individual sources. This will be done by drawing up harmonised noise maps to assess the noise exposure situation across the Community; informing the public about noise exposure and its effects; requiring authorities in Member States to develop action plans to achieve the required noise levels; and providing the European institutions with information on environmental noise, in order to assess the situation and develop further action. There are 51 different ways to measure noise, but could we not agree on the means of measuring it within the Community? That is the first step – actually drawing up these noise maps.
With regard to this last topic, I understand the concerns expressed by some Members who have tabled amendments making the case for proposals for daughter directives as of now to set new limit values for sources and environmental noise. However, the success of the innovative noise policy we wish to develop relies notably on the quality of the data we will be able to gather.
At the moment, the lack of such information is obvious, notably due to the lack of harmonisation of the assessment of noise exposure within Europe. The Commission believes that it would be premature at this stage to come up with proposals setting new limit values for noise.
We already have a raft of market access legislation which sets limit values for different kinds of road vehicles, for example. It will be simpler and quicker to tighten the noise standards in existing legislation than to introduce new daughter directives. We will consider what these standards need to be once we have the evidence from strategic noise maps and will, of course, report back to the Council and Parliament. For these reasons, we cannot accept the amendments introducing daughter directives and limit values, but we are willing to propose further actions as soon as possible, which is why we wholeheartedly accept amendments strengthening the timetable.
The directive does not concern specific sources such as aircraft engines and hushkits. The Commission has not yet had time to reflect on the ICAO decision last week, but we will of course come back as soon as we have had a chance to do so.
Moving on to the detail of the 36 amendments adopted by Parliament's Environment Committee, we are able to accept 28 of them, in full, in principle and/or in part. We can accept Amendment No 1, which alters the title, to make the proposal a Community framework for the assessment and management of environmental noise. However, as I said earlier, we believe that it would be premature to set new limit values, and thus we cannot support Amendments Nos 2, 3, 6 and 33. As for the timetable for implementation of the proposed directive, we welcome Amendments Nos 10, 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23 and 25, which propose restoring the dates of the original Commission proposal, and in line with these amendments we can also accept in principle Amendments Nos 15 and 16, which seek to reinstate tighter deadlines, although we would have more reservations on the deletion of the two-phase approach for roads and railways. In this respect, we cannot accept Amendment No 20.
Several amendments also help clarify the text, and, furthermore, we accept Amendments Nos 4, 7, 8, 14, 27, 28 and 29. We can accept in principle Amendment No 5, which introduces four important principles, though we would not wish other principles to be excluded. With regard to Amendment No 9, which seeks to reinstate the definition of human health, we support the first part of this amendment, while the reference to the World Health Organisation seems superfluous at this stage.
On the harmonisation of the common noise indicators, Lden and Lnight, Amendment No 11 makes the case for the compulsory use of these indicators for acoustical planning and noise zoning, while Amendment No 34 reintroduces the definition of an action plan being 'designed to reduce noise where a limit value in Lden or Lnight is exceeded'."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples