Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-339"
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"en.20020312.14.2-339"2
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"Mr President, very briefly, this is a very sorry story. It has been a bad story for some time and it is particularly embarrassing if you are Belgian, of course, or indeed anybody visiting Brussels, because the city of Brussels is one of the cities which has been in breach of this directive for the longest period.
My questions to the Commissioner, which she might like to consider answering either now or later at some time, are, first: does she not agree that the situation in this directive proves the need for a much more thorough impact assessment to accompany legislation such as this? I recall that when the urban waste water directive went through, the impact assessment was very feeble and never really gave any figures as to the likely costs. I am told that in the United Kingdom between 1989 and 2005, GBP 26 billion will be spent on upgrading the water system to deal with this directive. That figure was not known at the time when the directive was brought through – not in my country and not in any country; so the question is: can we obtain better, more effective impact assessments? Not just cost-impact assessments in terms of a global figure, but impact assessments as to the disadvantage of doing nothing set against the advantage of doing something.
Secondly, I wonder whether I might ask the Commissioner to be very bold, because this really does come down to the question of Mrs Wallström's debates with the Council of Ministers. One of our problems is not only that the Commission does not produce impact assessments, but that the Member States are not honest about their capacity to put in place what they sign up to. What we really need is a system whereby each Member State is asked at a Council meeting whether or not it can comply with the legislation that its ministers are about to sign up to. A very good place to start would be the new directive on packaging waste. I am sure that every Member State wants to send its minister to Brussels to agree to environmental directives; that is just our problem. They agree to far too much; they do far too little; and this waste water directive illustrates the problem.
I would like to congratulate Mrs Sornoza on doing this report so well. We had many problems getting the information out of the Commission, for the simple reason that the Commission did not have the information because the Member States had failed to furnish it."@en1
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