Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-12-Speech-1-070"
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"en.20051212.14.1-070"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank the European Parliament, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and in particular, the rapporteur, Mr Blokland, for this report.
Today, the existing Community legislation on batteries only covers a small part of all the portable batteries sold annually in the European Union. This has hindered the setting-up of efficient national collection and recycling schemes. Consequently, many batteries placed on the Community market today still risk ending up in the environment, in incineration or in landfills. To address that problem, the Commission presented a new legislative proposal for batteries in 2003 that would extend the scope of existing Community legislation from batteries containing certain dangerous substances to all batteries placed on the Community market.
In its proposal, the Commission introduced the concept of a ‘closed-loop system’, on the basis of which all batteries would have to be collected and recycled and their metals re-introduced into the economic cycle. At the same time, the proposal aimed to contribute to a proper functioning of the internal market for batteries and create a level playing field of all economic operators involved.
At first reading, the European Parliament did not embrace this concept of a closed loop. Instead, Parliament preferred to have a ban on certain heavy metals used in batteries. The Council also considered that the proposed closed-loop system would be difficult to achieve in practice and favoured a ban on the use of cadmium in portable batteries.
The Commission has accepted the overall package of the common position as a well-balanced package, on the condition that the level of environmental protection should not be lowered compared to the policy measures contained in the Commission’s original proposal.
Even though the Commission has embraced the common position as it stands, there are several issues that could benefit from further improvements, in particular regarding the definitions of different battery types and the collection targets. However, the Commission remains convinced that the dual legal basis in the common position is the right approach and will not give rise to problems foreseen by some in Parliament.
I am confident that the rest of the codecision process will allow a further fine-tuning of the right mix of policy measures, which are needed to protect our environment from battery pollution in the most eco-efficient way."@en1
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