Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-310"
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"en.20070619.43.2-310"2
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".
Mr President, let me start by thanking Mr Libicki and Mr Cashman for their hard work in preparing the report on behalf of the Committee on Petitions on the third fact-finding mission to Valencia. This mission gave committee members an opportunity to meet the representatives of the administrations and the complainants and to gain first-hand experience of the situation on the ground.
The urbanisation projects in Spanish regions at stake involve three main aspects: public procurement, fundamental rights and environmental rules. Let me give you a few indications of our actions in these areas.
Firstly, on public procurement: the Commission takes the view that approval of integrated action programmes under the Valencia Land Planning Law involves the award of public works and services contracts. We consider that some activities were carried out in a way which infringes EU public procurement legislation. I informed Parliament about this in December 2005.
We thus decided to launch infringement proceedings again Spain on this issue. The Commission challenged the existing law on land and town planning at the time. On 30 December 2005, the regional authorities approved a new land law which revoked and replaced the previous one. However, the new law does not correct some of these infringements, which relate to tender notices or the information required by tender notices and the unclear definition of the contract's object. It contains other provisions that are also incompatible with the directive on public works, supply and services contracts. We pursued the legal procedure during 2006. The replies we received from the competent authorities were not convincing. I therefore intend to propose that the Commission should refer this case to the Court of Justice.
Secondly, with regard to fundamental rights, the Commission cannot intervene in this area. In our view, the alleged infringements of property rights do not involve any provision of Community law which would enable the Commission to intervene on these grounds.
Thirdly, on environmental legislation: here too the Commission can only take legal steps when Community law is infringed. However, as far as the environment is concerned, land development policy as such does not fall within the competence of the Union. The departments under the responsibility of my colleague Mr Dimas do, however, investigate land development cases where these are alleged to infringe Community environmental law. I can assure you that the Commission will continue to see to it that the competent Spanish authorities comply with EU environmental rules when implementing urban development plans.
The Commission has already taken action in other cases when they fell within its remit, i.e. when urban development projects breached environmental directives, for instance those on water or on environmental impact assessment."@en1
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