Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-093"
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"en.20061211.14.1-093"2
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"Mr President, last month
the leading UK medical journal, published a report which spoke about a silent pandemic amongst children developing neurological disorders from exposure to industrial chemicals. There needs to be a lot more research on that. But we now have a chance to act on chemicals, and we should seize that chance.
The compromise package agreed by Parliament and the Council is a very good one. I want to pay tribute to the skill of Mr Sacconi, our chief negotiator, who worked in an extremely transparent and collaborative manner throughout these negotiations. I reject the accusation that it was untransparent. He always reported back to his shadows and to the committee, and people were kept informed, much more informed than on other pieces of legislation.
People have said that the compromise does not go far enough, that it falls short of perfection. It is not a perfect compromise. The Greens and the GUE/NGL Group have said that they will not support the compromise, which does not surprise me. However, the point of politics is not to grandstand or to reject compromises and go down in glorious defeat and remain politically pure, but to make a difference and to bring about real change that affects real people. That is what this legislation will do.
I heard people talking about mountains, but they are going to take us up mountains in the same way as Sisyphus pushing a great big rock up the mountain. We would never get agreement and therefore nothing would ever happen, and back down the mountain we would roll. I saw the majorities obtained in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and there was no majority to get anything better than what we have on the table this evening.
I agree with Commissioner Verheugen, who spoke about the need to make this legislation implementable, and I look forward to hearing what he is going to be doing and how we are going to work with the chemical industry and governments to ensure it works properly.
By voting ‘yes’ to REACH this week we can start to implement the legislation to get the agency up and running. I do not want to hang around waiting for miracle solutions some other day. I urge colleagues to vote ‘yes’ this week and make a difference, not just worry about making headlines."@en1
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