Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-03-Speech-1-155"
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"en.20060703.19.1-155"2
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".
Mr President, the regulation on applying the provisions of the Aarhus Convention to Community institutions, which will finally be voted on regarding its adoption in tomorrow’s plenary session, will complete a process whose principal beneficiary will be the EU citizen.
The future will show how well we have succeeded in our task. If the regulation is to work in practice as well as the two earlier directives, it will raise transparency in the EU to a level which will serve both our common inclinations and the public in the best way possible.
Finally, I wish to say a special thank you to Austria for the excellent work it did as the country holding the presidency of the Council. This was the third form of conciliation which I led in my capacity as rapporteur. My experience of the Austrian representatives’ expertise, familiarity with the subject and negotiating skills was incredible, and I therefore have every reason to give Austria top marks for its presidency. Similarly, I would like to thank the Commission’s representatives for their excellent levels of cooperation, which I have enjoyed throughout the entire Aarhus process since it began in 2000.
The issue concerns important environmental legislation which applies to access to environmental information and public participation in decision-making. Together with the Conciliation Committee we achieved a result in which we endorsed both of these, at Union level too.
The end result itself is, I believe, a balanced one. I am particularly satisfied that our Conciliation Committee adopted it unanimously. At the same time I want to thank my fellow Members. After some initial problems of interpretation, we found a common policy, which we successfully upheld.
I have been rapporteur for the Aarhus Convention throughout the entire process, ever stressing the importance of citizens’ rights in environmental matters. Openness and transparency are the lifeblood of democracy and a fundamental element in our own safety. That is why I am especially happy that we were able to improve the transparency of the institutions while retaining the powers, but also the accountability, of the institutions to which they are relevant. This concerns democratically elected institutions, such as the European Parliament, not forgetting the Council of course. In a democracy, the people are the highest authority and the decision-makers that they elect implement their will. That is why I did not consider it right to go down a path where politicians would be delegating power away from themselves to less open and less transparent agencies.
The Aarhus Convention, ratified by the EU and the Member States in the European Community, will be implemented by means of three directives, the two first so-called pillars of which have already passed through the codecision procedure, with conciliation. These pillars concerned the transparency of environmental information and the public’s right to participate. The fate of the third pillar, the directive on access to justice, is, unfortunately, still unknown. As these three Aarhus pillars were now being extended to the EU’s own institutions, that brought with it some legal challenges which set this regulation apart from earlier ones, those which were targeted at Member States.
One area which became problematic during conciliation was the proposals regarding access to environmental information. Parliament’s amendments contained technical and legal errors, which was one factor in the reason why our Conciliation Committee was closer to the view of the Commission and the Council than was still evident after the second reading. The exceptions to releasing environmental information were one example of this. Parliament, after the second reading, would have liked to rely on Directive 2003/4/EC, intended for the Member States, as far as exceptions to access to EC environmental information were concerned. Legally, however, it would have been impossible, as the directive is only intended for the Member States. The final solution was to apply Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001/EC, which deals with the public scrutiny of documents held by the EC institutions and which is tailor-made for this very purpose. This way the approach is consistent for all types of information.
The other difficult area where we abandoned the view reached during the second reading was the right for the public to participate in the drafting of action plans and programmes funded by the EU institutions. Right at the start there had been some confusion over concepts relating to this amendment. Some understood that the amendments related to access to information, although the question was about the right to participate. We nevertheless negotiated a good compromise.
With these few compromises we succeeded in preserving the spirit of the changes during Parliament’s second reading, although we did also abandon some of them in the end. Other important achievements in line with Parliament’s policy were lengthening the period of time citizens have to make their voice heard, and broadening the scope of the obligation which the EC institutions are under to open their archives. Furthermore, with regard to access to justice, Parliament succeeded in extending from four weeks to six the period during which NGOs may avail themselves of access to justice.
In the regulation itself, NGOs have been given a special role: that of requesting an internal review with regard to decisions by the institutions. This role, now created for them by the regulation, is important for the Union. I wish to thank the environmental organisations for their involvement and their input during the Aarhus legislation process. Although perhaps we did not always agree, for example, on the scope of the rights accorded them, I appreciate and respect their desire to genuinely be involved in drafting better environmental legislation in the EU."@en1
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