Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-19-Speech-1-161"
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"en.20040419.13.1-161"2
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".
Madam President, I wish to begin by thanking the European Parliament, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and in particular the rapporteur, Mr Blokland, for his report.
The Commission proposal for a new battery directive seeks to extend the scope of the existing Community legislation on batteries and accumulators containing certain dangerous substances to all batteries and accumulators placed on the Community market. Today the existing legislation covers only 7% of all the portable batteries sold each year in the European Union. This has hindered the setting up of efficient national collection and recycling schemes. Consumers have also been confused as to what is to be collected, and what not, and have therefore not participated effectively in the national collection schemes. Consequently, today many batteries still end up in the environment. In 2002, for example, approximately 45% of the total volume of portable batteries sold in the 15-member EU was landfilled or incinerated.
The current proposal aims to achieve a high level of environmental protection while at the same time contributing to proper functioning of the internal market for batteries. In this respect the Commission's proposal has two main goals: creating a closed loop system for all batteries and accumulators, and introducing a producer responsibility scheme. The proposed closed loop system requires Member States to take all necessary measures to prevent final disposal of spent batteries and achieve a high level of battery collection and recycling. I am confident that the proposed collection targets for portable batteries, in combination with the proposed high recycling targets, will protect our environment against the risks involved in the disposal of those batteries. Moreover, the proposal addresses the issue of the uncontrolled disposal of hazardous batteries containing mercury, cadmium or lead. In this respect, in addition to the existing restrictions on the use of those substances, established by the end-of-life vehicles directive, the following additional measures would be introduced: a ban on landfilling and incineration of all industrial and automotive batteries, which covers most batteries containing lead or cadmium, and an additional collection target for portable nickel-cadmium batteries, which requires monitoring of the waste stream to determine the volume of discarded portable NiCad batteries. The extended impact assessment has identified the proposed policy options as the most sustainable from an economic, social and environmental viewpoint.
I turn now to the introduction of a producer responsibility scheme. The application of the producer responsibility principle is an important step towards incorporating the external environmental costs into the production phase and, at the same time, towards encouraging producers to market more environmentally friendly products.
All batteries and accumulators should be diverted from the waste stream and recycled in order to avoid environmental damage and recover the various metals they contain. To achieve this goal, we need to create a closed-loop system and make battery producers responsible for the products they make."@en1
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