Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-12-Speech-1-113"
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"en.20060612.18.1-113"2
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".
Mr President, one of the Commissioner’s officials spoke to the Environment Committee recently. In response to one of my colleagues, he said that target values are no use at all. We have to have limit values; otherwise the Member States do nothing. Aspirations are just a figment of Brussels’ imagination. Nothing comes of them once people get back to their national capitals.
I think that is the impression many Members have; the impression that words are not being acted upon. It is increasingly difficult to secure proper compliance with environmental legislation from Member States. I hope that is something the Commission will be raising on a regular and frequent basis in the Environment Council – naming and shaming. Looking at the record, and I know the Commission has that in mind all the time.
I remember that when we discussed the Water Framework Directive, this Parliament’s amendments helped give that piece of legislation real teeth. We imposed legal requirements upon Member States. As a result, major impetus was given to trying to resolve some of the problems in certain States. Others, judging by some of the recent figures I have seen, are trying their best to circumvent the requirements imposed on them.
When we look at this particular legislation, Amendment 22 is the motivation behind many of our concerns. We were seeking to delete the words ‘aim to’ because we want to close the loophole. We no longer trust ministers to deliver what they say when they come to Brussels. We want legally binding requirements imposed on them, however difficult the enforcement machinery may be. It has been suggested that this is unnecessary: there are linguistic interpretations, or we misunderstand the difficulties. But I think it is very clear what Members want: we want words to be followed by action.
I spent some of last week trying to fend off the alleged concerns of the pesticides industry – manufacturers of plant protection products – that this legislation, as amended by Parliament, would lead to the complete banning of pesticides. It struck me as rather odd. I always thought pesticides were intended to kill pests, not to get into groundwater, and, if applied in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, they should not get into groundwater. So I do not see that we have a problem there.
The important thing for all of us, and for the farming interests too, is to recognise that we all have an interest in preserving groundwater and the soil structure for the long term. Bad farmers might have difficulty in meeting some of the requirements of this kind of legislation, but we are on the side of the good farmers and the environment, not the bad farmers, and that is as it should be."@en1
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