Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-19-Speech-2-612"
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"en.20101019.24.2-612"2
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"Madam President, I should like to thank very much those who spoke. You gave a good coverage of all the issues that we are facing. Before I get into answers, just let me say the following. When I arrived in the villages affected yesterday, the thought I had in my mind was: thank God it happened during the day, because if that accident had happened during the night, many more people would have died.
We also had quite different views on the Solidarity Fund. I would say two things here. One is that I agree that it is the responsibility of the polluter to pay, but at the same time, when communities are hit by a disaster of this nature, it is a matter of European solidarity and compassion to be able to give them a hand at this moment, because by the time that the liabilities of the company are met, months and months will have passed.
I find myself in an awkward situation, as Commissioner in charge of humanitarian aid and disaster response, when I can help the victims of the floods in Pakistan quickly, but there is nothing in my hands as an instrument to help the victims of this disaster. This summer, when we had floods in Romania and Moldova, I could very quickly provide funding to Moldova, but I could not do anything for the victims of the floods in Romania – and I am talking not just about myself; I am talking about us as European citizens.
This is a question to be looked into to see whether indeed, with the increase in disasters both at home and abroad, we should have in our hands an instrument that allows us to show compassion to our citizens.
And by the way, our citizens are perplexed as to why we can help Pakistan when we cannot help Ajka.
There have been questions that were directed to the role of the Commission. Let me make this very clear. The inspections and the monitoring are a Member State responsibility. We do not have a mandate in the Commission to do it. What we do try to do – through training activities, awareness raising, lessons learnt – is to bring all Member States up to speed in terms of their capacity to monitor and inspect. One of the speakers here said there are clearly institutional shortages in this area. We can help with training, but we do not have a mandate to be inspectors and to substitute for national authorities.
I do not mean that we should never have this mandate, but we do not have it today and, frankly, I think it is much more important for the national authorities to be better equipped to perform their duties than for more and more layers of inspection to be built up. Make sure that the people who do the job are equipped to do that job.
There have been questions relating to the recycling of red sludge. The directive does provide for incentives for research, and our environmental legislation encourages the transition to the best available technology.
Specifically for this installation, it should be in compliance with the highest standards by 2012. Of course, it is terrible that the disaster happened in 2010. Obviously – and I will finish with this point because I am well over my time – we have to learn from this case and raise our alert level as regards other places in Europe that could potentially be a source of danger in the future.
For a hazard not to turn into a catastrophe, the key is in monitoring, preparedness and prevention, and I could not agree more with those speakers who have hammered on this point. We do have a policy on preparedness and prevention and again, as is the case with the legislation we discussed, the critical issue is for this policy to be turned into reality in our Member States.
For our part, we will bring you a proposal, a communication to strengthen the EU’s disaster response capacity, and we will come back to you with the lessons learnt from this disaster.
Actually, from a distance, the houses look like somebody has painted half of them in red. Obviously this goes above the level where there are beds in which women, men, kids, elderly people sleep. When we are faced with something like this, it is really appropriate to have a thoughtful discussion and to make sure that we draw lessons from it. Then we can have a feedback into preparedness, prevention and response in the case of any future disaster.
So I take the comments that have been made here in this Chamber in this respect very seriously. Let me try to respond to them.
First, on the question of legislation and the role of the Commission. My exact wording was that, from the first analysis we have carried out, it does appear that we have the appropriate legislation in place and that, where we are still lacking sufficient action, this lies in the implementation of that legislation. I am emphasising the words ‘first analysis’ and, in my conclusion, I did stress that we would look into whether we have gaps in the legislation.
Again, based on what we have in front of us in this case and in many others, the focus really has to be on implementing the legislation we have rather than on saying: ‘Oh well, let us go out and write another piece of paper and stick it on top of many other pieces of paper’, when we know that the critical issue is implementation.
When we talk about what we might specifically be looking into from a legislative point of view, there are two specific issues at this point, though there may be more when we finish taking stock.
The first one is on the question of classification of the red mud as hazardous or not. We do not say that in every case when we have red mud, it is not hazardous. It may be hazardous if there is a high content of heavy metals, and if specific technical qualifications are met. In other words, there could be cases when red mud is classified as hazardous. At this moment of time, on the basis of the information that was provided by the Hungarian authorities, we can say that, on the basis of their information, this red mud is not hazardous, but obviously we need to carry out a more thorough analysis. Then the question would be how we deal with an issue like this and whether there is a need to tighten up the definition of hazardous waste. That I cannot answer today, but I can assure you that it will be looked into.
The second legislative issue that is very important is the question of liability that has been raised by a number of speakers. Do we have in the Liability Directive enough teeth to bite when it comes down to the implementation of the ‘polluter pays’ principle? I said at the very beginning that this is an area where the Commission is already initiating work to assess whether there is a need for tighter regulation of how companies act in terms of having the means to meet their obligations as polluters. That again would be work we will follow up very thoroughly.
The second set of questions concerns financing. What can we do? Hungary has dedicated structural funds and rural development funds at its disposal. We know from experience that, in the process of implementing programmes, there is always some room for manoeuvre. Basically, no country has ever achieved 100% utilisation of structural funds, and priorities shift over time. Therefore, it is possible for Hungary, if the government judges this a very high priority, to use structural funds or rural development funds for environmental monitoring for treatment facilities, for the rehabilitation of damaged infrastructures and the rehabilitation of agricultural land. They can also be used for changing land use, because it may not be possible for the land I saw to be quickly rehabilitated for its conventional agricultural use, but it may be possible to use it for energy crops which do not need to meet the same test in terms of dangerous materials."@en1
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