Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-15-Speech-2-183"
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"en.20051115.25.2-183"2
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"Mr President, there have been two early casualties of REACH, the first of which is truth. Too many in the chemicals industry, and particularly its German lobbying arm, seem to believe that if you are going to tell a lie, then lie big; the costs of REACH have been grossly exaggerated from beginning to end. The second casualty has been the Commission’s claim to be neutral in its support both for economic developments and for environmental protection at one and the same time.
After Commissioner Verheugen’s quite disgraceful attempts even to undermine the position taken by the British Presidency, we are entitled to believe that the balance in the Commission is now firmly anti-environment. A word of praise from our political opponents for the British Presidency: it has done well to secure an agreement between the 25 Member States without sacrificing nearly as many of the original objectives as some of us feared. I hope it secures a common position before the end of December and I hope that this Parliament votes on Thursday in a way that will bring it close to the Presidency’s position. However, we cannot yet be certain. There are still Members here who reject the very idea that industry should bear the burden of proving that the chemicals it puts on the market are safe.
There are still Members here who would strip away the testing requirements almost completely: ‘Trust us, they are chemical companies’ is their argument. There are Members here who still believe that chemicals of high concern should continue to be sold even when safer substitutes are readily available.
Mr Sacconi and Mrs Ek have negotiated compromises that will meet the genuine concerns of industry while still setting high standards of environmental protection. However, we have yet to see if they command majority support.
There is one matter that has hardly been considered: we are leaving a host of issues here to the new Chemicals Agency, but we have no idea what criteria it will adopt or whether it will be lax or rigorous in its interpretation. So, if you think the lobbying over the past year or more has been intense, wait until the industry starts trying to stuff the Agency with its own people. We will have to watch that process like hawks."@en1
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