Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20000215.8.2-146"2
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"Mr President, the European Parliament has a crucial role to play in the development of the Water Directive. The Council's common position is totally inadequate in a number of areas. Therefore, our task is to make the requirements in the directive tighter and more concrete. As members of the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, we regarded certain principles as particularly important when we adopted a position on the different proposals.
Firstly, we think that the time-frame for implementing the proposed measures should be shorter than that proposed by the Council. We therefore support the proposal to reduce the time allotted for implementing different parts of the directive.
Secondly, I should like the phasing out of noxious materials to be carried out consistently. There should be no initial delay to allow new evaluation criteria to be developed before the measures are implemented. The legislation should also have written into it the fact that the international conventions, such as the OSPAR Convention must be respected.
Thirdly, we should like a clear statement regarding the pricing policy. This means that the basic principle must be that the price should represent the real cost of the water used. Nowadays, taxpayers often have to subsidise industry and farming. The obvious point of departure for legislation should be that polluters or consumers pay, although exemptions would be permitted in extreme cases.
Fourthly, we should like exemptions from the rules on water status to be kept to a minimum and clearly defined.
Fifthly, the protection of groundwater status and measures against persistent pollution of the groundwater should be transparent and clear.
Against that background, our group is able to vote in favour of most of the amendments tabled by Mrs Lienemann, the rapporteur, as adopted in committee. We should like to see the scope of a couple of points extended. We will therefore vote for the Greens’ Amendments Nos 102, 103 and 104, which we consider to be improvements on the present position.
As regards pricing policy, there are sometimes extreme cases which may require derogations from the principles laid down in the report. My own view is that the options for allowing derogations had already been given proper attention in Amendment No 43, tabled by the committee and been even more clearly set out in the Greens’ Amendment No 105. I cannot see any need for other derogations besides those specified in the two amendments just mentioned. However, some people in our political group think otherwise. Consequently, Amendment No 107, on the same question, has been tabled by one section of our group only.
On the whole, I welcome the committee's proposals set out in Mrs Lienemann's report and think they could provide a good basis for a hard-won compromise."@en1
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