Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-13-Speech-2-017"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20030513.2.2-017"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, as we know, the environment is ‘out’. It seems to be difficult to arouse any sympathy for environmental standpoints. This proposal is also suffering from this. We have been dealing with it for many years, and we always seem to lack the conviction to actually do something about it. Now there is once again great disagreement about the way in which we should tackle liability. Industry has been lobbying hard, with arguments which are understandable but which I believe cannot be honoured. Insurance aspects are in particular being raised. Yet this has not convinced me to vote in favour of toning down the present proposal. On the contrary. I believe that strong environmental liability legislation will have a preventative effect with regard to environmental damage and will encourage the repair of the damage. ‘The polluter pays’ should be the logical adage. There has been a limited form of environmental liability based on that principle in the Netherlands for some time now. It works well, and it saves money. I believe that the Commission’s proposal has already bowed to pressure from industry to too great an extent. The Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market has made this even worse. I hope that by adopting the amendments submitted by myself and others, we can change the effect of the directive in a positive way. Over the next few years we will see in practice whether this directive is workable in the European Union. We do not have to bring things down to the lowest common denominator right from the start. If it does not work, we can always amend the directive. It would show real guts if we, as the legislative organ, were to take this risk now in order to avoid the risk of environmental damage."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph