Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-16-Speech-2-116"
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"en.20041116.11.2-116"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to add my thanks to Commissioner Wallström for all her work as Environment Commissioner. I know we are going to miss her very much and would like to extend our thanks to her. I should also like to thank Mrs Corbey for her report. This is a very important subject, which makes a real difference to our environment. It is an issue that constituents feel extremely strongly about.
There are two key issues in Mrs Corbey's report. Firstly the dates. I understand very well why the rapporteur is proposing slightly later dates than the Commission. Our Group, the Verts/ALE, can
certainly go along with that, with the proviso that we believe we need to be very careful that these compliance time gaps between older and newer Member States begin to start closing afterwards. As we have seen before, these gaps have in some cases actually got wider over time, so we need to make sure that over time they begin to close. On balance, however, we can accept the amendment.
Another key issue is Amendment 4, to which many other speakers have referred. We have great sympathy with what Mrs Corbey is trying to achieve with this amendment. The rapporteur is trying to safeguard Dutch national provisions on re-usable packaging. I would point out that at first reading, Green amendments were aimed specifically at enabling national re-use schemes to proceed, but on that occasion we unfortunately did not secure a big enough majority to get that through.
The Greens strongly support re-use as an important way to reduce the environmental impact of packaging, but we share the reservations expressed by others about trying to tackle that in this directive by amending a recital. We appreciate the motivation, but we do not think this is the right place to do that. We are not sure anyway how an amendment will support the Dutch case, since it does not amend the current legislation. We are not convinced that this recital would have an impact on the Netherlands, since this legislation appears to be much more applicable to the ten new Member States than to the 'old' Member States. Even if it were applicable, I am not sure how much further forward it would take us. The main difference between what we already have in Directive 94/62/EC on re-use and what the rapporteur would like to introduce is a slight reinforcement of the level of encouragement to re-use. But given that the amendment is just to a recital, I do not see how it really strengthens the existing legal possibility.
I strongly urge that we use all our efforts to promote re-use over recycling and recovery when we come to the full review of the packaging directive next year. I look forward to a strong Commission proposal next summer. That will be the right time to ensure that we give re-use the priority it deserves."@en1
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