Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-078"
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"en.20061211.14.1-078"2
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".
Mr President, REACH has been one of the most important, most extensive and also most complex pieces of legislation to have been discussed in this House in recent years. I should like to be the first to congratulate Mr Sacconi on the result achieved. In recent weeks, he has spoken a great deal about his dog, who desperately wanted him to do a little less ‘REACHing’ and spend a bit more at home with him instead. Your dog, Mr Sacconi, must be a terrier, given the tenacity with which you got your teeth into this issue, which meant that it was not always easy for the shadow rapporteurs to get what they wanted.
Thanks to REACH legislation, the 30 000 chemical substances that are available within the European market are once again being mapped out; the relevant information will be verified and applications will, where necessary, be regulated. This involves all substances that are produced in quantities of 1 tonne or more annually. Others give us a different account. Moreover, REACH replaces a set of very impenetrable legislation that has eventually made the European market unworkable. What we need to do is to let REACH do what it is supposed to do.
It has proven its worth: 1.3 million people are working in the chemical industry, 27 000 mainly small, but also large, companies work with REACH, or will do so in future; the turnover involved is EUR 440 billion. That is what makes it important that we should make this legislative package sound. The compromise that is now before us is, as I see it, the best compromise we could get after many long and difficult negotiations where extreme views were required to find the middle ground.
The compromise is very precarious, because on the one hand it protects man, the environment and the consumer, and limits animal testing, while on the other, it also offers an opportunity for creating the best possible climate for European industry. We can tell the Finnish minister that, whilst we are pioneers, we must ensure that our position also bears fruit.
REACH ensures that the responsibility is shifted from the Member States to the companies themselves, which is the most important improvement in respect of the common position. Other key points to the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats are the fact that confidential company data is protected more effectively, registration is better tailored to the Nassauer/Sacconi package – it is just unfortunate that nothing more came of this – and red tape is being reduced to a minimum. A sound balance has also been struck in the areas of authorisation and substitution. It is now up to the Commission to ensure that this piece of legislation will also be viable."@en1
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