Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-089"
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"en.20061211.14.1-089"2
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"Mr President, Christmas has come early for the German chemicals industry because, by supporting this incredibly watered-down compromise, Parliament will be giving the industry an early and unexpectedly large Christmas present, rewarding them for the relentless lobbying which has successfully torn the guts out of this proposal.
Thanks to that lobbying and to compliant politicians, both from the Council and among members of the PPE-DE Group in particular, dangerous substances will remain on the market for many years to come, even when safer alternatives already exist. I think that is going to be hard to explain to European citizens. It is a scandal that they will have waited 20 years in total for rules that will continue to allow hazardous chemicals to be used in everyday products, even when substitutes are readily available. It is also completely unnecessary: the second reading in the Environment Committee gave the rapporteur a clear mandate to push for mandatory substitution for all chemical substances of high concern when safer alternatives exist. And yet that was given away, negotiated out of existence.
Not only that, but the whole legislation will be shrouded in secrecy. It is completely unacceptable for key personnel in the agency that will implement this legislation to be able to keep their names and their declarations of interest confidential. That is outrageous, and it is extraordinarily ironic, too, that it comes at precisely the time when we are supposed to be convincing European citizens that the EU is open, transparent and accountable. How can we possibly be claiming that, and yet agree to confidentiality here?
In the view of my group, Parliament should have rejected the compromise deal and continued to press for a deal via a full second reading and conciliation. There is nothing in this package that we could not have achieved through conciliation, and much that we could have won. Instead, we have had a process that is untransparent, undemocratic and very easily manipulated.
My group has put forward two alternative compromise packages. That is not unrealistic, as some have said. In fact, what we are proposing is weaker than what Parliament adopted in first reading, but it is still stronger than the pale and weak compromise on the table now. It is based precisely on the bottom lines that a majority in Parliament have supported all through this process until the very last moment, but then chose to give up as a concession to the rest of the PPE.
So, when you, Mr Sacconi, ask us what other mountain we want to climb, the answer is: the one that has been on all of our maps from the very beginning of this process, the one that you told us we
climbing, which you were leading us up so well and so masterfully, until at the very last minute you lost your step, you lost your footing, you took a wrong turn and now we are all put in peril.
One final point on animal welfare. During the first reading in the Environment Committee, I tabled a completely non-animal test strategy, which was adopted. It did not survive the subsequent plenary vote, but it did send a very strong signal that we want much greater emphasis on non-animal alternatives. The promotion of non-animal tests is now one of the objectives of the REACH regulation, and that is hugely important. It must not just be a gesture; it must be turned into a legal commitment to replace animal tests much faster than we have been doing. Animal tests are not only cruel, they are inefficient, they are outdated and they are frequently misleading. Replacing them as fast as possible is not just an issue of animal rights: it is an issue of human health and of human rights as well."@en1
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