Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-09-Speech-1-094"
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"en.20050509.15.1-094"2
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"Mr President, our committee often receives mediocre proposals from the Council. Unfortunately, I sometimes have the feeling that the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety then sees its task as that of turning mediocre proposals into bad ones. We now have another example like that before us in the shape of the Bathing Water Directive. Actually, the name of this directive says it all. What it means is that the EU is to regulate water quality on our bathing beaches. I have to say that, in my view, that is extremely stupid.
One wonders if there is any issue so small that the Member States themselves are to be allowed control over it. In the Council’s defence, it has to be said, however, that this is no new form of stupidity, for the current directive is far worse than the compromise arrived at by the Council. According to the current directive, a small country such as Sweden ought regularly to measure the water quality at getting on for 5 000 bathing spots. The fact that Sweden does not measure the water quality at more than 800 such places is not a sign that we are some sort of European Wild West. It is an example of the way in which, as luck would have it, common sense has prevailed over absurd legislation. In the Council’s defence, I must say, however, that an attempt has now at least been made to get rid of some of the silliest aspects of the legislation. However, the proposal by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety on which we are to vote is, as I say, unfortunately an example of the committee wanting to turn mediocre legislation into bad legislation.
One of many examples of this is the fact that the committee now requires that information concerning the quality of bathing water in, for instance, Härjarö outside Enköping, where I spent many sunny summer days, also be distributed in French. Unfortunately, there is now a desire further to increase the burden in many quarters.
For example, a number of people want the requirements also to extend to the quality of water used in recreational activities and want the quality of such water regularly to be monitored. This includes water wherever people go windsurfing or canoeing or such like, with the result that, before you know it, water throughout the Swedish archipelago will, in theory, need regularly to be monitored. If the European Parliament is now to compel all the Swedish local authorities to measure water quality at every location bar none, I actually have a good mind to vote against the whole proposal. Unfortunately, we should then be in danger of losing the simplifications proposed by the Council.
In reality, the problem does not reside in all the details I mentioned but in the fact that the EU is regulating issues in a sphere in which Europe is so manifestly diverse. The fact is that the EU should not be regulating the way in which the quality of bathing water in lakes in northern Värmland is measured. Too many Members of this House appear to take a pride in the new regulations that they can claim, back home in their constituencies, to have introduced. I feel at least as much pride in having helped put a stop to some of the nonsense, and I hope that more Members of this House, following tomorrow’s ..."@en1
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