Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-12-Speech-1-175"
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"en.20060612.20.1-175"2
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".
Mr President, allow me to briefly describe the Commission's views on certain important issues raised by Parliament.
To conclude, I am pleased to announce that the Commission accepts 71 amendments, 16 of which are accepted in full and 55 of which are accepted in principle or in part. For the reasons I stated earlier, the Commission cannot accept 24 amendments. I shall file a full list of the Commission's positions on the amendments with Parliament's secretariat.
I should like once again to congratulate and thank Mr Seeber for his efforts and his exceptional work.
I should like to emphasise that most of the amendments approved by the European Parliament provide useful clarifications to the proposal and improve cohesion, especially in connection with the framework directive on water resources. I shall comment first of all on the amendments which the Commission can accept in full, in principle or in part.
Floods and the risk management measures applied to address them have two sides: they can simultaneously be harmful and can help improve the environment. The Commission therefore agrees with the rapporteur that it is important to strike the right balance between flood risk management measures and environmental protection, while at the same time maintaining adequate references to the framework directive on water resources. Consequently, the Commission accepts the following amendments: Amendment 36 on the assessment of existing man-made flood defence infrastructures, Amendment 60 on the economic and environmental appraisal of flood management measures and Amendment 74 on the prioritisation of sustainable flood risk management measures.
As regards the impact of climate change, the Commission agrees that this parameter must be taken into account, especially when reviewing flood risk assessments. Consequently, the Commission can accept Amendments 38 and 73, which strengthen the relevant provisions of the directive.
The Commission does not wish to impose any needless administrative burden on the Member States and shares the opinion that the Member States must, during the first period of application of the directive, be in a position to use maps and diagrams which already exist and which comply with the requirements of the directive. This was emphasised by the Commission in recital 13 of the proposal, meaning that the Commission can accept in principle the relevant amendments proposed by Parliament, namely Amendments 37, 55 and 71.
Material and effective application of the directive depends on cooperation and coordination between the main flood risk management agencies in catchment basins that cross the administrative and political borders of several countries. The Commission can therefore accept in full or in principle a series of amendments which further clarify these obligations, such as Amendment 62, which is accepted in full, and Amendment 61, which is accepted in principle.
I should now like to mention the amendments which the Commission cannot accept. Firstly, the Commission considers that the citizens have the right to protection against floods of any origin. Consequently, certain types of floods cannot be exempted, which is why I accept Amendment 28. Nor can the necessary information be limited for the purpose of mapping it. Consequently, the Commission cannot accept Amendments 14, 27, 42, 43 or 47. Within this framework, Amendment 51 is also unacceptable, because it is not in keeping with the rest of the text of the directive. Secondly, certain amendments add superfluous references or overlap with other elements of Community legislation or create legal obscurity. I refer specifically to Amendments 53, 59 and 63. The Commission cannot accept them.
Finally, the Commission cannot accept Amendment 23 deleting the recital referring to the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Of the 20 new amendments, the Commission can accept 14 either in part or in full. However, I should like to refer to a specific amendment which cannot be accepted for particularly important reasons. I refer to Amendment 81, which proposes a derogation for national catchment basins on certain conditions. There are two reasons for this: firstly, the Commission proposal applies to all catchment basins, both national and international. Both citizens and businesses demand the same level of protection and flood risk management, irrespective of the type or geographical location of the catchment basin. Any attempt to limit the scope of the directive to national catchment basins would create discriminatory situations and would set an undesirable precedent in the environmental policy of the European Union. Secondly, from the point of view of legal clarity, as I said earlier, the Commission supports a number of amendments which lay down preconditions to ensure that, during the transitional period, existing rules will be used in a way that is in keeping with the directive. Amendment 81 contradicts this objective and creates legal uncertainty for the citizens."@en1
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