Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-12-Speech-1-136"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20071112.20.1-136"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you and extend my thanks again to the rapporteur Mrs Gutiérrez-Cortines. It was a task that we worked on together and I hope that this has helped to improve the text.
During the vote on Wednesday, I would ask you to consider that what we need more than anything is a strategy and a directive that can guarantee future generations the use and enjoyment of the soil that we now have in our safekeeping, bearing in mind that each Member State faces the same threats and the same environmental risks. The soil is a resource, a resource that is scarce in Europe, and we must maximise its availability.
The directive under discussion today is aimed at protecting European soil from phenomena such as desertification, erosion and salinisation, increasingly linked with climate change and specific soil pollution. Paradoxically, despite the numerous regulations on the use and release into the environment of pollutants, there was no directive that made provision for any obligation to identify and certify soil that had been seriously polluted before improving it.
However, this seems to bother some people in Parliament and elsewhere, who are critical of what they call an attack on subsidiarity and the suffocating presence of the European institutions, which are using measures such as the Soil Framework Directive to harass groups of farmers or businesses, with unfair laws, unjust provisions and new administrative and/or financial burdens.
What are we talking about? We are talking about the same directive that gives the Member States a period of some 25 years just to identify all areas in the national territory that might be considered seriously polluted, and thus compromised for various uses, both public and private, and all areas at serious risk in fact of desertification, erosion, salinisation and loss of compaction.
We are talking about guidelines for organising a systematic improvement scheme, where necessary, in the collective interest. We are talking about the protection of human health alongside the protection of the environment. We are talking about a framework directive that not only respects the autonomy of the Member States, but contains no onerous provisions.
I ask you then why this aversion on the part of certain Member States and Parliament – the usual suspects – to accepting a list of activities and sites that must undergo comprehensive investigation by the national authorities? What do they have to hide? Why so much aversion, when their representatives on the Council have already accepted the binding nature of the investigation into all sites proposed by the Commission in Annex II, and the principle of transparency which must prevail in soil-related transactions?
In addition, there is added value in a Europe-wide approach towards soil monitoring, which will improve the ability of the Member States to learn about their soil. In any case reports to the Commission will be practically automatic, since they will be based on satellite surveys. It is not common knowledge perhaps that a project of this type has already been carried out by the Commission, resulting in the
which is a good example of what can be achieved if we work together.
However, there is another argument for a Community-based approach towards soil protection, which is climate change, a challenge facing all of Europe. This challenge will consist of extreme climatic events: more rainfall, longer droughts, less snowfall and an increase in sea levels. This means that we have a duty to manage the soil, precisely to combat these challenges, to increase water retention times across the entire territory to prevent flooding and encourage groundwater absorption, particularly along the coasts, and prevent saltwater infiltration, most likely due to rising sea levels.
Forestry management to control the risk of forest fires, since increased droughts will mean a greater risk of desertification in case of fire. Incidentally, this type of land management will encourage the use of renewable energy such as hydro-energy and biomass. Finally, we should not forget the part the soil plays in balancing greenhouse gases."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"Soil Atlas of Europe"1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples