Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-15-Speech-1-116"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20031215.9.1-116"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, I agree with what my friend and colleague, Mr Miller, was just saying. At the moment it is a pious platitude to say that the polluter pays - polluters on the whole do not pay or pay only a small part of what they should pay. It would be a great thing to move forward to a situation where it becomes a principle of law and not a pious platitude that polluters have to pay.
I was grateful for Commissioner Bolkestein's remarks about Amendments Nos 48 and 61. It is important to take account of permits and state-of-the-art. However, as the common position indicates, there are permits and permits. The degree of detail and specificity of what is permitted varies from situation to situation. In these circumstances, to have an all-or-nothing principle - either something is covered by a permit and, therefore, exempt from any liability, or it is not covered and fully liable - seems like a mistake. It seems right to adopt a principle of mitigation so that there is a sliding scale taking account of the variability of permits and circumstances.
The Commissioner also talked about nuclear liability. I happen to be the rapporteur for the still stalled report on the reform of the Paris Convention. I take his point that this will expand the range and level of liability of nuclear operators, but it remains the case, unhappily, that nuclear power still travels in a boat of its own, subject to a rather special exception to the 'polluter-pays' principle - the polluter pays quite a lot, but not necessarily everything in that case. My Group resents the special treatment of the nuclear industry. We said that during the Euratom debate and there will, no doubt, be other occasions to say it.
We are also concerned about going too easy on the GMO cases. That is another example where deliberate economic activity aimed quite laudably at profit and gain can cause exponentially spreading damage of a most alarming kind, and not to bring that within the scale of this directive would be to create an unjustifiable exemption.
There are other points I could make, but there are many speakers in this debate. We are very strongly in favour of this directive and hope that it will leave this House in a really strong form."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples