Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-322"
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"en.20060117.23.2-322"2
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"Mr President, the Århus Convention, signed by all 25 Member States, gives the public rights in the three areas of accessing environmental information, participating in environmental decision-making and accessing justice in environmental matters. This regulation before us has the objective of applying these rights against the EU institutions: Parliament, the Council, the Commission, the ECJ, the European Investment Bank
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It is essential that individuals who are directly affected by breaches of environmental law have a means of redress, whether through an appeal body, the Ombudsman or, if necessary, through the courts. This does not mean, however, drafting a lawyers’ charter, which is what we are in danger of doing.
While there are many excellent NGOs and pressure groups, which bring to our attention legitimate concerns on environmental matters and act as watchdogs holding the institutions to account on our behalf, I would urge caution in allowing any self-legitimising group to put an added burden on the institutions and clog up an already overburdened justice system. While I am opposed to Amendments 2, 7 and 12, my biggest problem is with Amendment 26, which proposes that all NGOs, regardless of the legitimacy of their interests or the transparency of their constitutions, should be granted the right of unfettered instigation of court proceedings against Community institutions for their administrative acts or omissions, such as in enforcing the implementation of EU environmental law.
In some countries, an NGO can be formed with a membership of less than five people. Such a body is not democratically accountable by any definition, but these amendments would allow them to challenge the Commission without providing evidence of how or by whom they are funded or for what purpose. It is a long-established principle of EU law – built up over many years of case law and underpinned by Article 230(4) of the EC Treaty – that citizens need to have a direct and individual concern in order to have a standing in the ECJ. Bypassing the Treaty with secondary legislation such as the amendments to this regulation makes a mockery of the idea that it is the victim of infringements of the law rather than interested observers – whose motivation and support base may not always be clear – who should be able to seek a remedy.
If the European Parliament wishes to extend the internal or judicial review process, it should do so through an amendment to the Treaty in the first instance. As a politician, democratically accountable to my electorate, I am also not prepared to delegate my responsibility to unelected, unaccountable bodies."@en1
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