Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-356"
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"en.20000705.10.3-356"2
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"Mr President, our experience of the Community eco-audit scheme has been very mixed. In Germany and Austria a great number of businesses have taken part in it, whereas the uptake from businesses in other Member States has been very low. The aim of the present revision must therefore be to make the eco-audit scheme more attractive. For that reason it is important that there should be scope to involve companies from the service sector and to support small and medium-sized enterprises. All that, however, is not enough, in my view. More needs to be done, particularly in terms of reducing the administrative burden and establishing ways of projecting the public profile of the service.
From discussions at various company headquarters it has emerged that EMAS has an internal impact and that workforces are playing a far greater part in protecting the environment, but the time has now come to improve the external impact of the system. In all the reflections on how to improve EMAS, one thing has to be remembered, namely that EMAS is a voluntary system which companies can join. It must not therefore be encumbered with concepts such as best available technology. These are binding specifications which set excessively difficult targets. All we shall achieve by adopting them is to make businesses quit the system. That surely serves no purpose at all. The system has proved useful so far, and we should build on the valuable experience that has been amassed. If we cherish certain environmental ideals, I am certainly willing to pursue them too, but that will take us down the road of directives and regulations. We cannot realise such ideals by opting for a voluntary system like EMAS.
One last point that seems important to me if the eco-audit is to be a practicable mechanism is the frequency of its validation. The proposal envisages renewal of the validation at yearly intervals. That, to my mind, is far too frequent. Companies have to spend nine months on the preparation of an environmental report. They cannot do that if annual validation is required. I therefore propose an interval of two to three years, and I hope you will support this proposal."@en1
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