Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-30-Speech-1-081"
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"en.20030630.10.1-081"2
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"Mr President, I shall concentrate on the proposal to award contracts for the supply of water. In Denmark, the supply of water is decentralised and based on a principle of solidarity where accessibility and prices are concerned. In Denmark, the water supply is owned by the consumer and managed locally, and those are very important prerequisites for being able to guarantee that water sources and the environment continue to be protected. Water is a public good. It must not be part of a strategy for the internal market or a means of promoting European industry. In the future, those who control the water supply will be those who wield power over people and money. The multinational companies are exceptionally aware of this, and there is money to be made in this area. It is estimated that, in the EU alone, the market is worth EUR 80 billion per year and that, in 15 years’ time, large monopolies will control 65-75% of what are now public water supplies.
A number of directives, including the two we are debating today, have now incorporated water as a commodity and are in the process of standardising countries’ water supplies with the purpose of liberalising them and guaranteeing that drinking water is subject to free competition throughout the internal market.
Experience in the UK and elsewhere is frightening. It demonstrates that, when the water supply is turned into a commodity and privatised, interest in the protection of resources also disappears. In fact, London’s private water suppliers lobbied enthusiastically, and on equal terms with the European chemical industry, for our simply allowing larger quantities of crop sprays in drinking water when the EU negotiated limit values.
The world’s total accessible fresh water resources are scarce. There are now already countries in which it is drinking water, rather than food, that is in short supply. Liberalising the water supply would mean that the fight for water would overtake that for oil. That is a frightening prospect.
At the moment, the EU is impeding Denmark’s efforts to safeguard our groundwater against pollution, while the EU is in the process of lifting a number of the bans on pesticides imposed in Denmark. The EU must not also destroy the Danish principle according to which the water supply must be public and always owned by the consumer and managed by the owner – an important and crucial prerequisite for security of supply and the protection of water sources. It must be up to the individual country democratically to decide which model they wish to adopt for the supply of their water.
Another little thing that naturally pleases me, since I live on one of Denmark’s many small islands, is that it has now been realised how completely useless it is to invite tenders for the running of our little ferries and that the process has now begun of drawing up a specific directive exempting these small ferries from the awarding of contracts. This is something I of course very much welcome, but it illustrates the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with the EU’s demand for tenders to be invited in connection with every task."@en1
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