Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-264"
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"en.20061025.24.3-264"2
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"Mr President, the Ivory Coast is an unstable country that has been made more unstable by environmental crime which has flowed from our continent down to Africa; with a Dutch ship and Dutch port authorities, a Greek-owned ship flying the Panamanian flag, then Ivorian companies and trucks dumping petrochemicals, killing – according to the United Nations – 12 people, and resulting in 104 000 people – again according to the United Nations – having medical care needs. That ship unloaded 500 tonnes of chemical waste into trucks which dumped it in 15 separate sites around Abidjan, a city of 5 million people.
The United Nations Environment Programme has said that this is clearly a crime, although they say they do not yet know who was responsible, or the actual nature of that crime. What we do know is that the Basel Convention should have stopped this crime and has failed to do so, and we need to know why. The Ivory Coast is a long way away; most countries in Africa do not have strong laws to protect human and environmental health from the effects of hazardous waste, but that is no reason for us here in Strasbourg to walk away from this case and its lessons. We want safe disposal, not toxic parcel-passing. We want – and I say this directly to you, Commissioner – those countries that have not yet ratified that convention, to ratify it; they include Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta and Slovenia. I hope you will pursue them and I hope the Council will pursue them, too.
Crime and responsibility and judgment are matters for the courts, but investigation and the plugging of legal loopholes are our responsibility; so is helping ACP countries to meet high standards in hazardous waste disposal; so is helping the victims of these appalling events – we think particularly of the children in the Ivory Coast who have been made to suffer because of them; so is ensuring that the Commission and the Dutch authorities and the EEA and the Government of the Ivory Coast all do their best to identify and pursue the perpetrators of this crime.
If the law is defective, then it must be amended. If the law is adequate, then it must be enforced. We know, though, that the law is flouted in too many cases. We know that it is too easy to avoid the cost of responsible safe disposal by dumping, by going outside OECD countries and by using national and international cowboys, and that is what we must ensure is brought to an end."@en1
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