Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-056"
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"en.20011001.4.1-056"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank all the speakers who have taken part in this debate, as I believe that, despite our political differences, we know that we must pull together in the face of tragedy. Mrs Wallström, the title of the statement that you made to us today obviously referred to the accident at the AZF factory, but it also referred to the rewriting of the European Union’s environmental protection policy because, in my view, this is what poses the challenge.
The accident that occurred at Seveso gave us the Seveso I directive. This was insufficient. The accident at Bopal was followed by the Seveso II directive. I do not wish to see us simply come up with a third Seveso directive, a point that my fellow Member, Mrs Ries, made very well. In my view, we must change the way we approach these problems as patching up after each successive tragedy can only achieve so much. Obviously, I agree that we need to further strengthen what already exists, but we must also know when to change tack. Since today we know that ‘zero risk’ is impossible – what has happened recently illustrates this, tragically – and so it is also impossible for people to live alongside a chemical time bomb. We must therefore move away from risk management towards risk removal.
The removal of risk will not be an easy thing to achieve, let us make no bones about this. We will not be able to do everything in one fell swoop. Several things will need to be implemented. First of all, we need resources. European resources, resources from other Member States, which will be crucial and which must obviously supplement the resources that the manufacturers themselves will have to provide, because these large international firms are making a profit, because the land that they own, due to their proximity to built-up areas, is worth a great deal on the property market, and also because if they relocate, they will undergo restructuring and will make substantial operational savings. We need resources, therefore, but we must also avoid causing social problems. Over the past few days, the people who worked at the AZF factory have been burying their colleagues. I do not wish to add unemployment to their list of problems – let us not add social crisis and social problems to the environmental and human tragedy.
We therefore must use all our resources to help these people to relocate if the site is sealed off, or help them with retraining if jobs are retained in Toulouse.
We must also be very careful with regard to relocation. The European Union has always been very sensitive to the question of solidarity and I believe that the large corporations are quite prepared to relocate, but they can quite easily contemplate relocating to the developing world, where there is no environmental protection and no social protection. In this respect as well, the European Union must make every effort to avoid this type of relocation. Let us avoid sending our time bombs and dangers to other parts of the world.
Lastly, now might be a good time, when discussing relocations, to consider the purpose of the products that are manufactured in the companies concerned. The factory that exploded produced fertilisers. Is there still a need today for us to flush more nitrates into the groundwater of Europe’s soil? It may also be the time to question whether some production methods are not perhaps obsolete.
I am calling upon you, Mrs Wallström, and via you I call on the Commission as a whole, because it is Europe’s turn to speak. Defining this general framework clearly falls within Europe’s remit. Due to the scale, frequency and almost unavoidable nature of these accidents, I believe that a pact of confidence has been breached between the people of Europe and the regulatory framework that we are supposed to implement. I think that we must restore this confidence as a matter of urgency. We are, I believe, now awaiting specific and firm proposals from the Commission. We should not be satisfied with purely cosmetic measures. We need political measures."@en1
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