Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-167"
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"en.20050427.15.3-167"2
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".
Mr President, with your permission I will also be representing Mr Florenz, Chairman of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. He should have been leading on behalf of the PPE-DE Group, but cannot join us this evening so he has ceded his time to me in addition to my own time, so thank you for your patience on that.
The oral question before us was tabled by my colleague Mr Florenz and we also have a motion for resolution further to that oral question on behalf of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety on the EU strategy for the Punta del Este Conference on Persistent Organic Pollutants. For the record, next week the first Conference of the Parties of the Stockholm Convention on POPs or Persistent Organic Pollutants, takes place in Punta del Este in Uruguay. POPs are organic chemicals that break down very slowly in the environment and accumulate in our bodies; indeed they are in the tissues of every human being on the planet. They are spread through the air and through the food chain very far from their sources, even to regions where they have never been used or produced.
They include insecticides such as DDT – perhaps the best-known POP – industrial chemicals such as PCBs and indeed the unintentional by-products of industrial processes such as dioxins and furans. Once POPs are released into the environment it is almost impossible to predict where they will end up, so we have to apply the precautionary principle, but most importantly take steps to restrict their use and their placing on the market generally.
It is important, however, that the needs of developing countries are taken into account and that our response is proportionate and that we allow controlled exemptions. I am thinking primarily of the use of DDT against malaria because, despite the best efforts of scientists and their redoubled efforts to find an effective vaccine, this is still many years away. So our approach must be proportionate, particularly when we realise that every minute two children in Africa die of malaria. Every day over 3 000 children in Africa die of malaria. The mosquito responsible for transmitting malaria has proved extremely resilient to the various methods of dealing with it down the years. To date the only effective method of killing the mosquito is by the use of DDT. Although it is a very toxic substance, the benefit still outweighs the risk when your child is less likely to die of persistent organic pollution poisoning than of malaria. So if we can save a child’s life, until we have some other way of doing it and killing the mosquito in question, we will have to allow controlled use. However, we must double our efforts to find an alternative to DDT because huge damage is being done to humans – it is biocumulative – and to our environment by our need to look after the children who are here today. We have nothing else to replace DDT to eliminate malaria and the mosquito involved.
I should like to put a few specific questions to the Commissioner. Commissioner, you will probably be familiar with the resolution that is before you. I should like to draw your attention to paragraph 9, which says that Parliament ‘believes that the Members of the European Parliament who are part of the EC delegation have an essential contribution to make and expects, therefore, that they will have access to EU coordination meetings in Punta del Este on the basis at least of observer status’. The motion goes on to say ‘with or without speaking rights’. I should be quite happy with observer status without speaking rights. Commissioner, I say this regardless of precedent or quoting interinstitutional agreements, because I would like to say yet again on the record that, just a few weeks after you were appointed, Commissioner, at the conference of the Parties in Buenos Aires in relation to climate change, COP 10, you made great strides in including the Members of the European Parliament, both before and after various meetings, in terms of full briefings. You even went so far as to ask us for our opinion on different issues. That was very much appreciated by all of us across the Groups in this House. I know you cannot join us in Punta del Este, but I would ask that you make it very clear to those honourable people who will be representing you there that you would like the precedent you created last December to continue.
It is one step less than we would like, because we want observer status and we request that. There is little point in sending Members of Parliament half way across the globe, to be part of a Commission/Council/Parliament delegation, a Community delegation, if one third are kept outside the door albeit with briefings when the business is done. Let us take it one step at a time, let us at least have observer status at the coordination meetings and at the meetings where the real work is done and of course be part of any press conference and press briefing that may wind up the week. It is the first COP – I accept that – and perhaps we will not have as much to report as we would like because we are only developing structures and strategies to deal with this most important issue.
Those are my points. At this hour of the night there is no point in underlining yet again how important a job the Stockholm Convention has to do.
I would like in conclusion to ask you, Commissioner, about the goals and the timetable for the addition of extra organic chemicals to the list of POPs as set out under the Convention, which were discussed last August. The Commission suggested that seven new substances should be added to the list for eventual exclusion. Somehow over the autumn and over Christmas and the New Year, by the time of the Council conclusions on 10 March, the seven had dropped to up to three additional substances. We had gone from a worthy ambition of seven last August to up to three, plus of course Penta BDE, the Norwegian proposal, which might be a fourth one. But up to three could be none, one or two as well as three. I would just like to know where the Commission stands on this. The European Community and the Member States wanted to forward an extensive list to be considered if possible before the first COP next week, but in any case in time for examination by the first meeting of the POPs review committee. Are we going to have it before next week? Why has it not happened? What has happened to the goals and the timetables that were clearly set out? Maybe you could tell us, Commissioner, what has happened between 10 March and today? It is rather disappointing that our ambitions of seven to be added last summer have been reduced to up to three at this stage. To me it sounds as though the urgency and the ambition that were initially there have evaporated. It is almost as if air is being let out of the tyre of enthusiasm in relation to it."@en1
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