Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-213"
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"en.20020116.14.3-213"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to thank Parliament for its resolution on the Commission's Green Paper and just remind you that it is a Green Paper, the start of the debate on integrated product policy. In particular I would like to thank Mrs García-Orcoyen Tormo being such a committed rapporteur on this challenging and difficult issue. I would also like to thank you for your speeches. I would agree with a lot of what has been said during this short debate.
In reducing the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle, the objective of IPP is fundamental to addressing our environmental problems. For this reason IPP is a key measure within the Sixth Environment Action Programme and the Sustainable Development Strategy also underlines its importance. The difficulty we face is that there are so many products on the market today, products that often have long supply chains involving many different actors. Because of this it is impossible to develop a "one size fits all" instrument. Instead we need a variety of instruments and exactly which ones depends on what is most effective at each point in the supply chain. They can be both voluntary and mandatory. I agree that voluntary measures should be complementary and we should make sure that they are not the only instrument used.
When thinking about IPP at European level, we should also recognise the experience gained in several Member States – Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Italy, to name but a few- over the last few years. There is, therefore, widespread acceptance of the concept and interest in it. In 1999 the informal Environment Council asked the Commission to come forward with a Green Paper on the issue. I therefore delivered this paper to start the debate on what form the European IPP should take. The reactions to it from the 130 stakeholders who submitted comments were generally positive, but what came back was what has been reflected here, namely that it is sometimes seen as being too fluffy and not really an understandable concept. But it sounds nice, as they say, and in general the opinions of the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions were favourable as well.
The Green Paper suggested a strategy and tools for making a European IPP a reality. Many such tools already exist – public procurement legislation, European eco-labels and EMAS, to name but a few. In other areas we will have to be innovative and think of new instruments. The Green Paper sought to canvas the views of stakeholders on the way forward.
The Commission did this not just because it wanted to develop the best possible policy, but also because IPP needs the active involvement of all stakeholders to succeed. Your resolution concludes this stakeholder consultation process and will enable us to develop the White Paper. From your resolution and the comments from stakeholders it is clear that the White Paper needs to start with concrete environmental problems. This is what we have learnt from this discussion. Issues such as climate change, hazardous chemicals and biodiversity affect us all. If we take environmental problems rather than instruments as our point of departure, we can better convey the idea that IPP is more than just a collection of tools, something that we perhaps did not do sufficiently in the Green Paper. We have to link it to concrete environmental problems to describe how to use these instruments. This is also what Mrs Paulsen referred to.
These tools will still be important. We need to continue developing them because we cannot address millions of products individually. However, I too am coming to the conclusion that we need to focus our actions on particular products and sectors. You rightly make this suggestion in paragraphs 24 and 25 of your resolution.
We will also need to set out the strategy for implementing IPP and its advantages and the Commission will need to consider carefully the measures within IPP's scope as well as how it relates to other policies. It is my intention to ask the Commission to adopt this paper during the second quarter of this year."@en1
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