Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-16-Speech-2-147"
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"en.20010116.9.2-147"2
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". – Mr President, first of all I thank Mrs Jackson for her important question. I would remind all the Members of the European Parliament that implementation of European Community law covers both the transposition of directives into national law and their application to individual decisions. It also includes fulfilment of other obligations such as adopting programmes, making designations and monitoring.
The difficulties encountered by the Committee on the Environment in these three reports are indeed not limited to the three directives chosen but extend to all EC environmental directives. The Commission, and not least the Environment DG are aware of these difficulties and have for some time devoted efforts to improve their performance in this field and I can assure you that next week when the Commission discusses the Sixth Environmental Action Programme the whole implementation issue will be a very important point in that programme.
We have a number of tools at our disposal to improve implementation. We can, for example, disseminate information to give a more up-to-date picture of the state of play and I know that we have also forwarded some of these reports and annual surveys to Parliament and that we can do much more to ensure some media attention as well. We can develop tools to aid in the analysis and evaluation of progress in implementation. We can take legal measures to follow up implementation. Since 1997 specific initiatives have been pursued on a number of fronts including environmental liability, which of course will put pressure on the Member States to follow the existing rules and regulations; complaints and investigations procedures at national level where we have been involved in playing a consultancy role; access to justice, magistrates' training courses – also very important because this is also about education – and the publication of this annual survey on the implementation of environmental law.
We have also worked to create a clear link between implementation of the directives and Community cofunding which has proven to be very effective as well as ensuring a close relationship with the LIFE financial instrument, because when they see that the money is threatened if they do not comply with the regulations this will definitely put pressure on the Member States.
In May last year we had a first name and shame exercise, as we call it, on bathing water quality. A second exercise will take place in March this year and I will continue to follow this up so as to give us a scoreboard of how Member States are implementing Community legislation. Just last week the European Parliament and the Council, as Mrs Jackson said, reached an agreement on a recommendation which will establish minimum criteria for environmental inspections in the Member States. All these initiatives are intended to increase the level of knowledge of and compliance with European Community and environmental law. Of course, I acknowledge that there is still much to be done. We have to look for new ways to encourage the proper transposition and application of environmental legislation. For example, we need to work to improve the involvement of people at the local and regional level. Greater public awareness at these levels would lead to closer scrutiny and to public demand for effective implementation of environmental legislation. We must remain vigilant and active to ensure that the situation improves and I would like to confirm to the European Parliament my personal commitment and that of my services to ensuring the highest possible level of compliance with European Community environmental law.
To this end I will apply all means available, including the formal infringement procedures set out in Articles 226 and 228 of the European Community Treaty and 141 and 143 of the Euratom Treaty, which may lead to imposing economic penalties on non-complying Member States.
I would be more than happy to receive more resources and personnel from the European Parliament to work on this. Today we have about 45 to 50 staff working full or part-time on implementation, and, of course, we would need more than that. But I also think that it is for every civil servant here to actually look at the implementation part of introducing new legislation. I have been very clear from the beginning that I will put more emphasis on implementation. That needs the three I’s: information, integration and implementation, which should be the guidelines for the future. I hope that you will agree with me that we are starting to make progress on improving implementation and if both the Commission and the European Parliament continue their efforts to highlight the problem and act on it, further progress will surely be made during this parliamentary term."@en1
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