Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-04-Speech-4-013"
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"Madam President, Secretary of State – and may I express our appreciation of the fact that you clearly took trouble to be here in time for the debate –, Commissioner Dimas, ladies and gentlemen, health and the environment are not always compatible subjects, especially now at the beginning of the 21st century. Our citizens are exposed to pollution in various forms, more often than not as a combination of different factors, and this applies whether you live in town or in the countryside, by the sea or in the mountains.
It is therefore anything but a coincidence that, according to the latest statistics put out by Eurostat, six out of every ten Europeans believe it highly or relatively likely that environmental pollution is affecting their health and also, and this is important, that the European Union is not sufficiently active in this area, which is the whole object of our debate this morning.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my colleagues and most particularly the shadow rapporteurs of this report, Mrs Ferreira, Professor Trakatellis, Mrs Breyer, Mrs Belohorská and Mrs de Brún, for the excellent collaboration that we have maintained since the start of this particular project, which dates back to 2003. Indeed it was in 2003 that the European Commission set the ball rolling with what was then the SCALE initiative, which focused on children’s health, followed the year after with the launching of an Action Plan that is due to run until 2010. This is an initiative that we consider to be inadequate in scope in that at its February 2005 sitting Parliament adopted a resolution that was fairly critical, it has to be said, based on the simple assessment that an action plan, in essence, cannot set itself the sole objective of producing more data and conducting more research, even if these are of an essential nature. We were therefore disappointed, and all the more since one Member State after another, notably France with its national health and environment plan along with many of the German Länder, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and others, went on to set up ambitious national plans of their own
Three years later how far have we got in reducing illnesses that can be attributed to the impact of pollution? At Community level not very far, it seems to me, and I therefore now want to present a proper mid-term review of the situation as it stands. Certainly the European Union, as we have said over and over again, can pride itself on having achieved many successes in combating various forms of pollution. While it is impossible to list them all, they include the recent legislation on ambient air quality – which owes much to your vigorous efforts, Commissioner – the pesticides package, which is about to be completed, and of course the REACH initiative, which places controls on more than 10 000 chemical substances and proposes to replace those that are causing the most problems. I would also like to mention another important aspect, namely the funding provided by the Commission over the last three years for more than 38 projects devoted to health and the environment as part of the Sixth Research Framework Programme, which comes to an estimated total of more than EUR 200 million. In other respects, and given the difficulty of assessing the impact of this plan, which has so far failed to live up to its name, I would say that our overall impression is somewhat mixed.
Our draft resolution today therefore centres on the need to restore the precautionary principle, which I know is also held dear by the Secretary of State. Like her, I sincerely believe that we need to redeem and revive this principle, which as I have said before is that of action rather than abstention, and ensure that it is applied as part of Community policy, as provided for in Article 174(2) of our Treaty and now established as an ongoing precedent by the Court of Justice. Still on this subject I believe that it is important that we should seek to shift the burden of proof for all product legislation – and this is what we are providing for in point 13 of our resolution – because it is only right, and indeed it is obvious, that the producers and importers should be responsible for demonstrating that a product is harmless. I would add that, wrongly perhaps, this is what most consumers already believe.
The second subject of concern, and of no less importance, is that which is covered in points 23 to 25, namely the issue of climate change. We have examined this crucial question in close collaboration with experts from the WHO. The phenomenon that is most frequently depicted by these experts is that of an increased intensity and frequency of heat waves. How can we forget that after the summer 2003 heat wave more than 70 000 additional deaths were recorded in some ten European countries? It appears to us that a system of preventive measures – reduced exposure to heat, an early warning system and of course aid for the elderly – needs to be put in place here. I would also point out that the increase in temperature levels brings with it the appearance of certain viruses, such as the chikungunya virus that struck Italy in 2007, and that while this was anything but an epiphenomenon, at least according to the experts, it was perhaps an early warning sign of numerous pandemics in Europe. Obviously this also calls for a response that is appropriate to the potential scale of the problem, and at the very least a proper system of coordination between the Commission, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm and the various European capitals.
I would like to round up my presentation by referring to what has, for the health sector, been the soap opera, the saga of summer 2008, one that has been running everywhere in many countries – in France, Belgium and others besides – and here I am talking about the flood of information, articles and studies, most of them contradictory, on the health risks, proven or otherwise, of mobile telephone devices, and particularly of the threat they pose to the most vulnerable groups, especially children. Here the highly, if not to say excessively, media-conscious David Servan-Schreiber was not the first to set the alarm bells ringing. What we are stating in paragraphs 21 and 22 of our resolution is simple: all these various studies tend to show that electromagnetic fields have an impact on human health; moreover, exposure limits, it has to be recalled, have not been amended since 1999 and therefore remain the official European Union standard, while at the same time we have a complete lack of consensus among researchers as to whether or not GSM waves pose health risks.
This scientific uncertainty is likely to run and run. The time will come when the policy-makers have to take a decision and that is what we are doing in the resolution that is being presented today."@en1
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