Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-10-Speech-4-007"
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"en.20030410.1.4-007"2
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". – Madam President, first of all, I would like to thank the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy, and in particular their respective rapporteurs, Mr Nobilia and Mr Purvis, for their open and constructive work on this proposal. The nature and number of proposed amendments indicates that much thought and effort has gone into the examination of the Commission’s proposal. In this respect, I am sure that the public hearing organised in February – in which it was my pleasure to participate – served as a useful introduction to the very technical issues dealt with in the proposal.
The Commission believes that its proposal represents an equitable and appropriate balance between the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development. It will provide the high level of protection of the environment and of human health required by the Treaty, and it will do so at a reasonable cost.
The aims of the Commission’s proposal can be stated quite briefly. They are accurately summarised in Mr Nobilia’s report. They are as follows: first, to introduce more stringent tests for the biodegradability of surfactants in detergents; second, to expand the scope to include all four types of surfactants instead of covering just two types as at present; and third, to introduce labelling requirements to benefit the consumer and the environment.
The first two measures will significantly enhance the protection of the aquatic environment with respect to toxicity, and the third will also benefit the health of consumers with respect to allergies. In addition, the proposal brings all EU detergents legislation together in a single text to make it more user-friendly, so this is a major effort to simplify EU legislation.
Besides presenting what is in the proposal, I would also like to say some words on the wider legislative context. I do this to explain why certain things have been left out of the proposal.
In the first place, this proposal supplements, but does not replace, the horizontal legislation on chemicals, in particular the directives on dangerous substances and preparations. Indeed, detergents are not dangerous in the sense of the Dangerous Preparations Directive. We need to supplement the general horizontal legislation, not because detergents are especially hazardous, but because they are released into the aquatic environment in very large amounts. Legislation is justified even for a chemical preparation with a low hazard, if it can pose a risk to the environment through being released in sufficiently large quantities. We need a regulation on detergents to fill this sector-specific limitation in the horizontal legislation.
Legislation on detergents therefore needs to address certain specific issues, principally, of course, the biodegradation of surfactants. It is therefore important to see the proposal not as the final position on detergents, but as an instrument for bringing detergents within the harmonised area of the Internal Market, and as a tool for tackling the associated responsibilities.
This proposal provides a framework for addressing issues relating to detergents, as and when they arise. It also provides a tool for keeping the legislation up-to-date in response to technical progress and the increased understanding of, and concern for, the environment. Other issues relating to detergents that are not addressed by the proposal will, however, be addressed by horizontal legislation; for example, at the last session we had Mr Lannoye's report on Nonylphenol and the next debate today is on Mrs Schörling's report on CMRs.
Another important feature of the proposal concerns derogations for those surfactants that pass the old biodegradability tests, but fail the new tests. Derogations will only be granted for surfactants that can demonstrate, by means of a complementary risk assessment, that they will pose no risk to the environment. In no case would such a derogation be granted for use in an ordinary laundry detergent. This will only apply to specialised industrial and institutional uses where the tonnages have been declared and taken into account in the risk assessment.
The complementary risk assessment has to provide sufficient information to enable the risk to the environment to be properly evaluated. At the same time, unnecessary testing should be avoided. In this respect, toxicity testing will only be required if a Member State specifically requests it in cases where doubts remain. The testing requirements are therefore judged to be the minimum necessary consistent with a reliable evaluation, while at the same time minimising the amount of animal testing, as well as limiting the overall expense of the testing."@en1
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