Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-28-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20050428.5.4-034"2
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"Mr President, the proposed directive is intended to ensure that groundwater quality is monitored and evaluated across Europe in a harmonised way. The proposed approach to establishing quality criteria is both flexible and iterative, taking account of local characteristics and allowing further improvements. This directive responds directly to Article 17 of the 2000 Water Framework Directive, and we have been waiting for it for some time.
The approach of the Commission is to establish groundwater quality standards at EU level for nitrates and pesticides – on which many colleagues have commented – and to allow Member States themselves to establish threshold values for a range of other substances such as arsenic and cadmium, a minimum list of which is set out in the directive. I agree with that approach, as there is no need for any further harmonisation across Europe. We must respect differences in climate and soil type.
I shall go one step further. Eventually that approach, which allows Member States to decide on the basis of river-basin management plans – which under the Framework Directive will eventually manage all freshwater sources once they are put in place – will also allow Member States to manage their nitrate and pesticide pollutants. We should eventually take this approach to everything.
The Nitrates Directive has been mentioned. Farmers also need and want clean water. Nobody can be allowed to pollute our groundwater or freshwater with nitrates or anything else. However, a one-size-fits-all policy has proved extremely difficult, as colleagues have said, with 12 out of 15 of the older Member States currently in court for non-transposition or improper transposition of the Nitrates Directive. It was never a comfortable directive. It never fitted properly, because we did not respect the differences in Member States and we did not trust Member States to monitor their own pollution in that area.
I wish to ask Commissioner Dimas specifically why he continues to allow the Irish Government to add a pollutant, fluoride, to our public drinking water supply. I know it is not directly an issue for the Commission, but how can we stand up here and wax eloquent about water safety and about water being essential for life – on which we all agree – if we continue to allow a Member State to pollute the public water supply with fluoride? I ask the Commissioner to do something about that urgently or all this legislation – framework directives, water directives and so on – will come to nought."@en1
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