Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-21-Speech-2-185"
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"en.20090421.21.2-185"2
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"− Mr President, I should like to start by saying how relieved I am that, at long last, we finally have before us a proposal for legislation to tackle the problem of illegal logging. Parliament has been waiting for this for an enormous amount of time and I warmly thank my colleagues for their persistent efforts to see it brought forward. I would also like to thank my colleagues for their outstanding cooperation in bringing us to the point of tomorrow’s vote; shadows and staff have truly pulled out all the stops so that we could complete Parliament’s first reading in the shortest possible time, so as to be in a position to seek a first-reading agreement and thus to avoid any further delays.
Sadly, however, the painfully slow rate of progress in the Council has put paid to that idea. So it seems that we will have to be content with concluding this work in the autumn, following political agreement by the Council in June, and that is very disappointing both to myself and to many colleagues who have worked so hard. Had the Council been here I would have liked to have asked them for a guarantee tonight that they will do everything possible to reach a common position before the summer, because this situation is incredibly urgent.
Illegal logging is a hugely serious problem, against which the EU has preached for many years, yet all the while continuing to provide one of the world’s biggest markets for illegally logged timber and timber products. Between 20% and 40% of global industrial wood production is estimated to come from illegal sources, and up to 20% of that finds its way into the EU. That depresses timber prices, it strips natural resources and tax revenue, and it increases the poverty of forest-dependent peoples. The longer-term effects are even more serious, as Commissioner Dimas indicated, since deforestation, of which illegal logging is a major driver, accounts for nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
With the Copenhagen Climate Conference now on the horizon, credible EU action on illegal logging is ever more important. But credible action means effective, binding legislation. While the voluntary partnership agreements conceived under the 2003 FLEGT Action Plan have the potential to drive positive change, to date only one has been signed and, as long as their coverage is not universal, the risks of money-laundering and circumvention are just too high.
The good news is that we do finally have EU legislation; the bad news is that the Commission proposal is distressingly weak and will need comprehensive improvement in order to become meaningful and effective.
In spite of Commissioner Dimas’ good words about the importance of tackling illegal logging, the Commission proposal as it stands simply is not up to the job. The preamble to the proposal states that ‘weak rules to prevent trade in illegally harvested timber’ are at the root of the prevalence of illegal logging, but what the Commission has come up with, I am afraid, will do nothing to change that. Quite simply, the Commission proposal as it stands will not achieve our aim of ensuring that the EU no longer provides a market for illegally logged timber.
The most glaring, gaping hole in the proposal is that it does not actually prohibit the import and sale of illegally logged timber – perverse as that sounds. It requires only that operators at one particular point in the supply chain put in place a due-diligence system while everyone else is immune from any obligation as to the legality of the timber or the timber products that they trade.
Now that stands in stark contrast to the revised US Lacey Act adopted in May 2008, which does enact an explicit prohibition on the import and sale of illegally logged timber, and there is absolutely no good reason why the EU cannot emulate this. So, while my report maintains the Commission’s suggestion that only operators who place timber and timber products on the EU market for the first time should be required to put in place a full due-diligence system – since they are clearly the actors with the most influence – it makes clear that all operators in the market share responsibility for trading only legally sourced wood and that failing to do that may constitute an offence.
I should like to say to Commissioner Dimas that I really do believe that our proposals are supplementing due diligence: they are making it more effective, they are making it operational and there is no problem at all with WTO rules. If the US can do it, we should do it, and that is why Parliament is seeking to amend this proposal."@en1
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