Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-16-Speech-1-066"
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"en.20080616.19.1-066"2
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"Madam President, following your ruling that there is no time for points of order, I will continue with my speech on the Waste Framework Directive. It is a little difficult to do so against this background, but I will persevere.
It may be important to the Greens not to be happy, because Greens are eternal campaigners, but they should take some account of what the Commission has said in that statement.
Secondly, we have added new provisions on the prevention of waste, in Article 8a. These will mean that the Commission has to report on the evolution of EU waste generation and the scope for waste prevention by 2011, and by 2014 must produce proposals for waste prevention, and decoupling objectives for 2020. It proved impossible to get the Council or the Commission to agree to quantitative waste prevention targets in this Directive, partly because the data necessary for those targets is missing, but Parliament has, through its amendments, created momentum for future policy that may contain waste prevention targets.
The new article therefore represents a significant achievement. It is something for our successors to build on. We cannot do everything in this Directive, but have to hand things on to our successors in the next decade.
Thirdly, we have firmly placed the famous EU waste hierarchy in EU law for the first time. We have been talking about this for years, but if you look at EU law it is not there. However, it will be soon, and we can celebrate a minor victory in getting the Council to agree that the hierarchy shall apply ‘as a priority order’ in waste prevention and management legislation.
Fourthly, we have secured agreement to place better emphasis on hazardous waste management, as several colleagues wanted.
Fifthly, we have also ensured that priority will continue to be given to the regeneration of waste oils – although there was no support for a policy, which I know some colleagues wanted, that would have made regeneration mandatory in all Member States. We secured Council support for the amendment put forward by Mrs Hennicot-Schoepges and colleagues designed to make it easier for SMEs to use the waste list, and we also obtained support for a new article on biowaste.
In conclusion, the Directive specifies the energy efficiency criteria for incineration, with energy recovery to be classed as a recovery operation rather than disposal. That is the best deal available. Anyone who thinks that we could get anything better by going to conciliation would be deceiving themselves. In the famous words of Jack Nicholson, ‘this is as good as it gets’.
Since certain comments have been made on this point in the British press recently, may I begin by drawing attention once again to my declaration of interests, which I made on the record, and which cites my membership of the Environmental Advisory Board of Shanks plc. That company operates a wide range of waste technologies in Britain and on the continent, and the primary purpose of its Environmental Advisory Board is to provide independent audits of the operation of its plants.
My fellow board members include the chairman of the EU Scientific Advisory Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks and a member of the Green Alliance.
Like many Members, I value the opportunity this kind of experience has given me to learn at close hand about the issues and problems facing this industry and those who work in it.
Turning to the Directive, it has been a long and tortuous road to this second reading and I congratulate those of my colleagues who have accompanied me on it to the very end. The issue is a very important one. Various judgments in the Court of Justice regarding the status of waste destined for treatment in energy-from-waste plants needed to be clarified. New definitions were needed. Two existing directives on hazardous waste and on waste oils were repealed and their provisions transferred to the Waste Framework Directive. However, the committee was not content with those original proposals, and went on to transform the Directive from a technical one into a campaigning one. I congratulate my colleagues on that.
I have to say that the mood in the Council was very bleak, possibly mirroring our economic times. There was much resistance to what we wanted to do and the Council drove a very hard bargain, but we achieved the following.
Firstly, we have added recycling targets to the text. That is a very significant achievement since these were not in the original proposal, and this is the first time that recycling targets for household waste have appeared in EU legislation. It is entirely due to Parliament that they are there.
The new Article 8a requires Member States to take the necessary measures designed to achieve an overall recycling rate of 50% by 2020 for paper, metal, plastic and glass from household and similar waste. There are some Member States, such as Germany, for which this is a conservative target, but there are many for which it is very demanding, and we need to take them into account too.
The same article also requires that by 2020 70% of construction and demolition waste be recycled. The Greens and their supporters are putting it about that the targets are not enforceable. They may even believe that, but they are – extraordinarily – rejecting their own achievement. The Commission has issued a statement to help them, and Mr Dimas will confirm this. The statement says quite clearly that if in 2020 the targets are not achieved, this will be a serious indication for the Commission that a Member State has not taken the necessary measures designed to achieve the targets. On this basis, supported by conclusions in the tri-annual national progress reports, the Commission can take Member States to court for non-compliance with the requirements of the Directive."@en1
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