Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-30-Speech-2-311"
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"en.20040330.13.2-311"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to have arrived late, but that is because we currently have not only mining waste to deal with, but also – basically, indeed, anticipating the next parliamentary term – and again, with our REACH system, in other words with chemicals policy. I have just been spending the evening with BASF, a major chemicals business, and have had to leave them in a rush in order to get here.
The Group of the Party of European Socialists is very happy with the legislation we now have on waste from the mineral-extracting industry. What we in Europe need is unified standards for the management of this waste, which will not only lead to greater similarity between the conditions under which companies compete in the Member States, but will also, at the same time, improve the public’s living conditions and their environment.
The Committee’s deliberations generally focussed on the definition of what is meant by waste and on the financial guarantees to be provided by the industry, but a broad majority backed what we agreed on, and there was general agreement on it; we hope that the plenary will tomorrow follow us in that agreement. We want every company to be obliged to ensure that it is able to repair any damage to the environment for which it is responsible. We do not insist that only one form of financial surety should be possible. Although we have left a great deal of leeway and many options, the Member States and the Commission must guarantee to us that this will work.
When it came to defining mining waste, we took on board everything from everyone who engaged in the discussion process – the industry, the environmental NGOs, the Court of Justice, and, not least, the Commission. There is no question of us in the Committee having voted to reinvent existing legislation; quite the contrary, that is precisely what we have avoided. We have made a number of improvements to the Commission proposal with environmental considerations in mind. We have made the connection between ecology and economy, something that Social Democrats have always been keen to do. The fact that the plenary has only 20 amendments from the groups to vote on testifies to the good work we have done in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy.
I found working on this dossier with my fellow Members of the Committee a very pleasant experience; the Commission, too, was very helpful on many occasions, and so let me now express my warm thanks for that."@en1
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