Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-13-Speech-2-044"
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"en.20030513.2.2-044"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, numerous environmental disasters such as the latest one concerning the
oil tanker, which was shipwrecked on the Spanish coast, have sped up the progress of environmental liability legislation in the EU. In my own country, Finland, furthermore, people are worried when they see the dreadful condition of some of the oil transporting vessels that sail along our coasts. People’s health is inseparably linked to the environment around them. Questions of environmental liability are thus naturally close to the hearts of our citizens and therefore also constitute key areas of focus in our policies. A third of the petitions that arrived at the European Parliament last year, around 1 700, concerned these very problems relating to the environment.
The Commission’s proposal for a directive aims to ensure that the polluter will pay the costs of remedying future environmental damage. This to be a harmonised framework across the European Union, allowing us to avoid a situation whereby a company chooses to establish its registered office wherever the most favourable legislation applies. In order to avoid distortion of competition in the internal market, it is important that the directive is implemented in as uniform a manner as possible in the EU Member States. It is also important to retain the legal basis relating to the internal market, that is to say Article 95, after a five-year transition period.
We discussed the Commission proposal on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, and we are proposing numerous necessary amendments to it. Our amendments are generally aimed at clarifying the legal interpretation of the directive and striking a balance between the interests of industry and of environmental players. To avoid any legal uncertainty we proposed that the field of nuclear safety, which is already regulated by means of international agreements, should be excluded from the directive. The international conventions on nuclear safety are at present being revised, and comparable environmental liability regulations are to be included in them. It would be unwise of the EU to undermine the importance of the international agreements right now, as they are being revised and will be expanded to apply also to the new Member States."@en1
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