Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-30-Speech-2-279"

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"Mr President, the subject of today's debate is not whether or not we should sign up to the Århus Convention. As the Community signed this text in 1998, it is now our responsibility to act so that each of our governments can implement this agreement. By signing the Århus Convention, the Community has committed itself to adopting legally binding instruments, namely a directive and a regulation, in order to bring Community legislation in line with the provisions of the Århus Convention. It was with this requirement to comply with the Convention in mind that the committee carried out its work. It is also along these lines that the amendments tabled in plenary, which are widely supported, were drawn up. Our work initially consisted in uniting the various concepts taken up in the texts and in adapting them to the definitions in the Convention. On the other hand, we have respected the Commission's decision to give non-governmental organisations working in the environmental sector access to justice, while further opening up this route to qualified entities with legal personality. In the same vein, we have turned the objective of promoting sustainable development into an essential condition, included in their statues, of exercising the right of access to justice. Furthermore, only the provisions contained in the Århus Convention and in the directive granted access to justice to members of the public who bring to light an infringement of a right or who have an interest in acting. As we were anxious that the Community institutions should be bound by the same rules as the Member States, we chose to incorporate this provision into the present regulation. Finally, we constantly ensured that we respected the need to apply the principle of subsidiarity to the Member States with regard to legal procedures. Indeed, insofar as these matters relate to procedural law in the Member States, they are based on the Member States' procedural autonomy and must not result in a restrictive legal instrument from the Union. It is also inconceivable that we could establish a specific provision, a sort of privileged right to easier and cheaper access to justice on environmental matters: it is essential for questions of access to justice to be dealt with consistently and on an overall basis in all sectors, not just specifically in the environmental sector. Finally, some of the proposals in the working document go beyond the obligations arising from the Århus Convention. We must retain the room for manoeuvre that the Convention gives the Member States in the implementation of these obligations. To conclude, I think we have reached a fair compromise which aims to promote, in accordance with the provisions of the Århus Convention, effective implementation of Community legislation on the environment. I could, perhaps, summarise it by saying ‘the whole Århus Convention, and nothing but the Århus Convention’."@en1

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