Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-15-Speech-1-109"

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"en.20031215.9.1-109"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this time I cannot talk on behalf of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party because we have not adopted positions on a number of the most critical issues. Just as Mrs Gebhardt said, we face an unusual situation. There is a danger of Parliament impairing the Council’s common position on environmental matters, a factor that also emerged from Commissioner Bolkestein’s contribution. It might conceivably involve a deterioration in relation to the position in the majority of Member States. That would be a scandal and must not happen. To Mrs Niebler, I wish to say that a strict liability exists that is much more comprehensive on many issues than the situation that would result from this common position. The proposal is not, therefore, particularly radical, either. Allow me to take a practical example. If the committee responsible had its way or if Amendment No 61 were adopted, we should be approving a situation in which it would scarcely be possible to require the Helsinki port authorities to repair the damage that is in the process of occurring there through TBT Poison being produced due to dredging and then spread in the watercourses in eastern Helsinki and in the surrounding archipelago. That is because dredging takes place completely under licence, and the authorities had at no stage been able to foresee that this poison would exist in the dredging waste. This case is now also being dealt with by the Committee on Petitions. I wanted to mention this in order to show how unreasonable it would be to adopt the reservations, now chosen by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, relating to existing levels of knowledge and to exemptions from liability if permission has been given. Financial arrangements must be acceptable in the compromise proposal we now have. They cannot, however, be harmonised too far, because we have different, quite creative arrangements in different Member States. Finally, I want to ask MEPs to remember that ‘state’ is not synonymous with ‘authority’. This matter also affects the local authorities to a very great extent, and this fact must be taken account of in the vote."@en1

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