Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-278"
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"en.20061025.24.3-278"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank the chairman of the Committee on the Environment, Public Heath and Food Safety, Mr Florenz, and all the other speakers for their very positive contributions to today’s debate.
The Commission is preparing a new proposal for a directive which will give effect to the Court’s judgment and should be adopted soon. It has taken some time to produce the amended proposal, because the Commission has very carefully analysed the Court’s judgment and made a comparison of the original Commission proposal as amended after Parliament’s first reading and the Council’s framework decision. In addition, an impact assessment is being carried out to analyse the various options for action.
The Commission thinks it is necessary to amend its proposal of 2001 after the Court’s ruling, to ensure that all criminal law measures necessary to ensure the effective implementation of the Community’s policy for the protection of the environment are included in the proposal. The Court has made it clear that the parallel adoption of a directive and a framework decision, as was done in the past, is no longer possible. Also, after five years, the Commission’s proposal needs to be adapted to legislative developments.
I would like to clarify that the Commission does not want to harmonise national criminal laws fully. The aim is that only those steps which are necessary for the effective implementation of environmental policy should be taken at Community level.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasise again the importance of good cooperation between the Commission and Parliament in the forthcoming codecision procedure for the adoption of the directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law. We have the same goals, namely to protect the environment by establishing minimum standards for the sanctioning of environmental offences and to try to eliminate the possibility of safe havens for environmental offenders in the European Union. Acting together, we can take a big step towards achieving these objectives.
Finally, as regards the ratification of the Basel Convention, I have sent letters to more than 50 countries around the world asking them to ratify the Convention. To avoid any wrong conclusions, I should clarify that the Basel ban is mandatory, legally binding, for the European Union Member States, even those that have not ratified the Convention, because we as the European Union have signed and ratified the agreement.
I would like to add to the list of nationalities that Mr Bowis referred to. This was a Greek-owned ship, under the flag of Panama, but it was time-chartered to a Dutch company, which operated it from Switzerland, with a Russian crew, financed by British and international banks and with a variety of nationalities on the board of the company and as shareholders. Happily, it was blocked by Greenpeace in Estonia and the Estonian authorities thoroughly investigated the case.
I should like to assure the rapporteur that first proposal, which contains a minimum level of penalties, will be merged with the framework decision of the Council and basically it will be along the lines of what you proposed, with certain amendments at first reading.
With regard to the question of whether a ship carrying hazardous waste is allowed to leave a European Union port, if the waste is hazardous it is not allowed to go to a destination outside the OECD. That also applies to slops – the ship’s own waste water – that contain hazardous substances.
I will continue to follow closely all developments in the criminal investigations and proceedings that are currently being conducted in the Netherlands and Estonia regarding the toxic waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire. The Commission is also in the process of collecting any information available in other Member States concerning the vessel
and its journey. I hope that we will soon be able to draw conclusions from that and find the best way forward in preventing such incidents in the future. We must keep in mind that the tragic incident in Côte d’Ivoire is just the tip of the iceberg. We know that is so from inspections carried out in Member States by their network of implementation and enforcement agencies, IMPEL. In 2005, 51% of the waste shipments checked were found to be illegal.
Most of the cases do not make big headlines but they can, nevertheless, pose a serious risk to the environment and human health. We must make it very clear that our society does not tolerate environmental crime and that we are determined to take all possible steps to fight it. But legislation that we have adopted to better protect our environment and the health of our citizens will not achieve its objectives if we do not take the necessary measures to ensure that it is properly enforced. I can assure you that the Commission is determined that environmental legislation should be properly applied throughout the Community.
We are already taking a number of specific initiatives in order to ensure that the European Union waste shipment regulation is correctly applied and illegal waste shipments are prevented and reduced. This includes the preparation of guidelines to be adopted in connection with the application of the new waste shipment regulation next year and the organisation of awareness-raising events in Member States.
The Commission meets representatives of national authorities responsible for waste shipments on a regular basis. This takes place within a well-established framework and includes multilateral meetings in Brussels, as well as bilateral contacts, but these initiatives need to be supplemented by measures to establish effective sanctions.
One of the many measures taken by the Commission for this purpose was to propose a directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law. As I have already said, it is regrettable that the Commission’s proposal was not taken up by the Council, due to a difference of views on the correct legal basis. Now, however, the Court of Justice has confirmed that the Commission’s views were correct."@en1
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