Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-28-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20050428.5.4-017"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Klaß’s report on groundwater is an extremely complex one. However, the question we could ask today is whether the objectives of the Water Framework Directive and the objectives of preventing and controlling groundwater pollution will be achieved by the proposals contained in the report. The protection of groundwater is indeed a crucial issue, since it relates not only to our own water resources today, but also to those of future generations, and to the aquatic ecosystem as a whole. We know how complicated the study of groundwater is, and we also know that, once a body of water is polluted, it remains so for years.
Today, these resources are threatened by a wide variety of forms of pollution. Some aquifers have already seriously deteriorated due to the effects of intensive farming, with massive use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers, including nitrates. The precautionary principle requires us to give a higher priority to the prevention of pollution than to the remediation or cleaning of groundwater, even supposing we could seriously contemplate easily cleaning an aquifer.
If we are to prevent groundwater pollution, our most urgent priority must be to eliminate sources of pollution. However, certain amendments lead us to fear that, no doubt for reasons to do with sectoral interests, the urgent need to take a more radical approach to the prevention of pollution has not been grasped. Specifically, certain indirect discharges have been excluded: fertilisers and plant treatment products used in accordance with good agricultural practice. In fact, this comes down to official acceptance of agricultural pollution, which is unacceptable, particularly as we know that the main culprit in groundwater pollution is, of course, agriculture.
The position proposed in Amendment 45 must be rejected out of hand if we want to achieve results with regard to protecting our water resources. The Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, already disappointed that the Commission’s initial draft did not go far enough to actually protect the quality of groundwater, is worried that this report is further weakening even the Commission’s position. If some of these amendments were adopted, this draft would amount to a licence to pollute and would, of course, in the end make European consumers pay the price of drinking water that would have been polluted practically legally.
In our view, Article 6 and the compromise put forward by the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left and ourselves are the most important, because they require a clear prevention policy that bans the most dangerous chemicals and strictly limits other pollutants. That is why we call on Parliament to support this compromise."@en1
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