Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-343"
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"en.20060117.25.2-343"2
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".
Mr President, hundreds of thousands of European citizens fall ill every year as a result of entering contaminated bathing waters. The diseases acquired in this way range widely in severity. Most are clinically benign to moderate, but some are serious and a few are fatal. As expected, children, the elderly and the immunosuppressed are the most vulnerable. It is thus imperative for the legislative bodies of the EU to be greatly concerned with the quality of bathing waters.
They have indeed been working on this issue for many years, and one would expect the parameters used to monitor the quality of bathing water to be as strict as possible. Unfortunately this is not quite the case, and the reason for that is simple. It is that vast amounts of money are involved in the recreational and tourist industries associated with bathing waters, and if an area is pronounced to be of low bathing water quality then this has a serious economic impact on that region and that country. So the doctor’s opinion is no longer paramount, and ‘political compromises’ are the order of the day. Thus it is that after many years of talking, discussion and arguing – mainly about things that, if seen purely from a common sense point of view, are crystal clear – we end up in a conciliatory position in which we reduce the possible economic damage to countries with unhygienic bathing waters and increase the collateral risk of causing ill health among our citizens.
Many colleagues will disagree strongly with what I say, but how else can it be explained when, for example, we have invented a distinction, as far as health risks are concerned, between inland and coastal bathing waters, and we are prepared to accept that inland waters can be almost twice as unhealthy as coastal waters yet still be of sufficient quality for bathing in. And how else can it be explained when we are prepared to label bathing waters as being of good quality when the risk of falling ill after swimming in them is of the order of 5% – i.e. 1 in 20 swimmers. Although I will support this directive, it does not go far enough to make our bathing waters really safe. It just makes them less hazardous.
In conclusion, many thanks are due to everyone who has worked so hard to produce this directive, and especially to my colleague Mr Maaten – although he is not a swimmer he has still worked extremely hard – to the Commission and, of course, to the members of the Conciliation Committee."@en1
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