Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-16-Speech-3-277"
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, after a very tense debate on chemicals policy, it is a great relief to get back to considering a topic on which there has already been a very broad majority in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and on which I assume there will be one tomorrow as well.
As Commissioner Dimas said, the Commission proposal of 2004 is the instrument whereby the international agreement is to be implemented. My proposal that it be rejected was adopted virtually unanimously by the Environment Committee, with 47 votes in favour, 3 against and 2 abstentions. I will now proceed to explain why mine was one of the votes against.
As the proposal is covered by the chapter on environmental policy, the European Union is obliged to take the latest scientific knowledge as the basis for the legislative proposal. Such a basis is absent; all that has been done is to incorporate, almost word for word, the agreement negotiated ten years ago. There are also legal incongruities between the proposal and other EU legislation, including, for example, the directive on the protection of animals used for experimental purposes and the habitats directive. The Commission proposal would allow the trapping and killing of animals protected by the habitats directive. There are, as we all know, certain circumstances under which trapping methods and traps may be necessary, but we stated from the very outset that it was inappropriate to describe the directive as laying down humane trapping standards. The proposal is very weak and will do nothing to reduce the suffering of animals caught or killed by means of traps.
The Commissioner has himself made clear, and I do myself believe, that we have to recapitulate a certain amount of history if the firm rejection by Parliament is to be understood. It was in 1989 that Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a ban on the use of leghold traps in the European Union and on the import of furs and fur products from countries in which they were used. By way of a response to this, a regulation on this subject was adopted in 1991, which prohibited, with effect from 1995, the use of leghold traps and the import of the furs of thirteen named species from third countries. This ban does not apply where one of the two conditions is complied with. That is also the reason for this international agreement. Suitable legislation or administrative regulations are in force to prohibit leghold traps except where the methods used to catch the animals listed meet internationally agreed humane trapping standards.
This EU regulation would make it a matter of the utmost necessity that trapping standards be established at international level in order to obviate a ban on imports. It was threats on the part of the USA and Canada to contest these import restrictions before the WTO that resulted in the negotiation of an agreement between the EU, Canada, Russia and the USA, which only the EU and Canada have so far ratified. The trapping standards prescribed in the agreement reflect norms already in force in Russia, Canada and the USA and can in no way be categorised as humane. It was as long ago as 1997 that the European Parliament adopted a report that described the international agreement as wholly inadequate in terms of either animal welfare or the environmental objective and expressed the view that it was wholly unacceptable that the European Union should sign up to it. An agreement offering not even the most minimal guarantee that the other parties would abandon the use of leghold traps within a speedy and specific timetable is not one that should even be put forward for serious consideration. This House adopted this report by a large majority in 1997.
So much for the historical review. I hope we will, tomorrow, get a broad majority for the rejection of what I regard as a very poor proposal from the Commission, and also that the Commission will demonstrate that it has some grasp of what democracy is and will withdraw it."@en1
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