Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-10-Speech-2-751-000"
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"en.20110510.69.2-751-000"2
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Mr President, honourable Members, firstly, my colleague and friend Mr Potočnik sends his apologies, as he is in New York this evening for the signing of an important agreement – the Nagoya Agreement – on biodiversity.
Thirdly, waste production has increased or stabilised in recent years. Waste management is improving throughout the Union, and recycling has increased over the last five years. Yet what is remarkable today is the great disparities between the Member States with regard to the implementation of our waste requirements. The Commission, ladies and gentlemen, is conscious of the environmental, economic, social, human and public health consequences of illegal waste shipments, and the
affair, in which several people died after being exposed to hazardous waste illegally dumped in Côte d'Ivoire, is one of the worst examples in living memory, and here too there are lessons to be learnt. The Commission has launched numerous studies on this issue, and the results of these investigations can be consulted on our website.
Once illegal shipments of waste have been detected, there are measures laid down in the regulation to remedy the situation. The waste must be sent back to its country of origin, pursuant to EU legislation and international law. If the companies responsible cannot be located, the country of origin in the Union must pay a fee to have the waste repatriated and treated. In some cases, Member States have to bear costs in excess of EUR 1 million. In the
affair, which I mentioned a moment ago, the company Trafigura had to pay the equivalent of EUR 152 million in clean-up costs and EUR 33 million in compensation to the residents of the affected towns.
Lastly, I should like to say to Mr Seeber that, as far as I am aware, Mr Potočnik promised to present that communication on the implementation and enforcement of EU law and he is in the process of drafting it.
Nevertheless, I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to stand in for him, or to try to do so anyway, since the issue you are discussing is one that has always interested me, ladies and gentlemen. I was Environment Minister in my own country and I have not forgotten the efforts that we made, during my first mandate as Commissioner around 10 years ago, to begin to address this extremely serious issue with Parliament. The Waste Shipments Regulation prohibits exports of hazardous waste to developing countries, as well as exports outside the Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries of waste intended for disposal.
However, we know – and you have pointed it out – that the efforts made to enforce this ban vary greatly between Member States. Operators often seek to benefit from inadequate inspections in order to get round the ban and smuggle the waste through other Member States where the inspections are less rigorous, as you said.
Furthermore, false declarations are often used to export waste as second-hand goods, which complicates the work of the authorities responsible for monitoring and enforcing the rules. Then there is the obviously low treatment cost in third countries, which is the main economic factor encouraging or driving these illegal shipments. There is also the very serious situation of countries that receive, so to speak, this waste, these illegal shipments, which cause significant pollution of the air, water, soil and homes, and which threaten – as you said a moment ago, Mrs Wils, and as Mrs Bearder and Mrs Rosbach said with the same emotion before you – people’s health, and particularly children’s health, which is the most shocking of all, as well as the health of workers and of a large proportion of the population. The already toxic nature of the hazardous substances contained in waste often poses a further increased risk when inappropriate waste management techniques are used, which is often the case in these countries of destination.
Furthermore, illegal shipments of waste to third countries obviously have an adverse effect on trade and competition since, economically speaking, businesses that comply with the legislation evidently face competition and are put at a disadvantage. The European recycling and waste management sector, which is bound to comply with the EU’s rigorous environmental legislation, is a dynamic one. It has a healthy EUR 95 billion turnover. It provides, or supports, 1.2 to 1.5 million jobs and accounts for 1% of GDP, and this waste management and recycling sector, which operates by the rules, is also competing with, and put at a disadvantage by, these illegal shipments.
Effective enforcement of the Waste Shipments Regulation at EU level would encourage this sector, I believe, to invest and to create even more jobs in the future. Illegal waste shipments and poor quality recycling also lead to a loss of resources, since secondary raw materials can go a long way towards meeting Europe’s raw material requirements, and can also improve the effectiveness and use of resources. On the basis of this diagnosis, then, we need to improve the situation. That is why the Commission has sought to find out whether additional legislative measures need to be taken at EU level and, if so, which new, specific requirements and criteria they would include for waste shipment inspections.
We are currently completing an impact assessment of the various possible approaches to resolving the problem that I just mentioned, including national inspection and mandatory national risk assessment plans and programmes, as well as more targeted training for national officials responsible for enforcing the provisions and, on the other side of the coin, for proving that those who declare waste to be second-hand goods are doing so fraudulently.
I should like to conclude, Mr President, by raising the following points in response to some specific questions. Firstly, it is possible to circumvent the Waste Shipments Regulation by claiming that the articles being exported are second-hand goods rather than waste. The main problem is that the Member States are not implementing the inspection requirements properly. To remedy this, the Regulation needs to be supplemented by more detailed rules on national inspections. The legislative measures should be accompanied by adequate training for officials in charge of enforcing the rules, as I said.
Secondly, non-legally binding guidelines at EU level could support and facilitate the implementation and enforcement of the Waste Shipments Regulation, particularly by customs officers, and thus help to combat illegal activities. However, guidelines alone will not be enough. We also need binding rules to combat this problem."@en1
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