Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-055"
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"en.20011001.4.1-055"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, I would like to join previous speakers in expressing my group’s solidarity with the families, the victims’ relatives and the people of Toulouse as a whole. Given the latest legal information we have at our disposal, and whilst awaiting completion of the inquiry that is currently underway, which will determine the causes of the disaster, what lessons, Mr President, can we draw from this fatal explosion?
First of all – and this is distressing, truly distressing – history is repeating itself. It is 33 years since the Seveso disaster, not to mention the other disasters that have occurred, and two European directives seeking to provide the Member States with a harmonised policy in managing major industrial risks will not have been enough to avoid another human tragedy. This is a stark reality that illustrates the limits of a law, even where this is binding and transnational. We should avoid responding to this industrial catastrophe with a Seveso III directive. The Liberals consider it imperative, and the Commissioner reiterated this, that, first and foremost, all Member States strictly apply the provisions of the existing legislation, particularly the Seveso II directive, which dates back to December 1996. And we still have a long way to go before this can be done, with infringement proceedings launched against six Member States, one of which is France. You also stated, Mrs Wallström, that all Member States were behind in the transposition of the directive into national law. So, did the manufacturer, the owner of the site, update the safety report at any point in the last five years, as specifically laid down in one of the articles under the Seveso II directive? It is worthwhile asking this question, since at a seminar held in France in 1999, the European Union network for the implementation and enforcement of environmental law (Impel) discussed the causes of a massive ammonia leak at the 'Grande Paroisse' factory, which is in the Seveso II category, and the finger of blame was pointed at design faults and equipment reliability. We must conclude that the precautionary principle did not prevail in this case. Must we reiterate that this risk assessment provides an essential basis for any strategy to prevent and avert all types of disaster? And now I come to the key point of this debate, which is, as Mrs Berès has already said, the monitoring of land use planning in areas surrounding these sites. Employees of the factory are of course affected but everyone living nearby is also a victim of the massive chemical explosion. The AZF factory was nothing more and nothing less than a time bomb situated less than five kilometres from the centre of Toulouse, a city with a population of 400 000. This is not the only example of a city in Europe that has seen a population explosion. If you draw two lines on a map of Europe, one from London to Milan and the other from Copenhagen to Barcelona, and 200 kilometre corridors along each side of the lines of this X, you will have 65% of Europe’s population and 80% of Europe’s manufacturing sites, including the dangerous ones, within this restricted area. In France, there is a national debate on the issue of risks to the urban population. Three hundred and sixty million citizens of Europe expect, here and now, to see a genuine land planning policy resulting from the unprecedented disaster that struck Toulouse."@en1
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