Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-083"
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"en.20061211.14.1-083"2
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".
Mr President, I will not go into the details of the analysis of the REACH compromise that will be put before us. My colleague Mr Holm will do that in a few moments. For my part, I would like to dwell on just one idea: REACH is both a fine illustration of what Europe could be and a sad confirmation of its contradictions today.
Only a few weeks ago, REACH promised to be the sign of a real ambition for Europe. The European Union was going to adopt legislation that at last put public health and the environment above short-term economic calculation; it was at last requiring undertakings to take account of the social cost of their headlong pursuit of competitiveness; it was at last learning the lessons of the asbestos scandal and, given that the new legislation would also cover products imported in considerable quantities, Europe was forcing world industry to adapt to its new standards.
Europe therefore had a great opportunity, in an area that very much strikes a chord among our citizens, to forge itself an identity of progress by changing conditions here and in the world. With this in view, many non-governmental organisations, trade unions and elected representatives have worked actively to make this fine project a success. Many of them are now very disillusioned at the excessive concessions made to the big European groups.
Admittedly, and this is an important point to make, the reversal of the burden of proof remains. It is no longer up to the authorities to prove that the chemicals used are toxic, but for industry to show that they are safe.
That being the case, what justification can there be for allowing undertakings to continue, even if under supervision, to use substances that are acknowledged to be very dangerous even though less harmful alternatives are available on the market? After the terrible precedent of asbestos, this is ethically unacceptable, as is the right given to company managements to keep secret the information they hold on the possible toxicity of chemical substances less than 10 tonnes of which are produced in a year, as is the case of the great majority of them. Please stop using the financial weakness of small and medium-sized enterprises as a pretext! My group tabled an amendment requiring large companies to provide SMEs with the information they possess on the substances in question in order to save them pointless expenditure. That amendment was rejected by the authors of the majority compromise.
One last comment worth thinking about. This second-rate compromise is not the result of economic weakness in the face of an unequal balance of power; the bad example comes from the top. The REACH legislation is too ambitious. It is not the kind of project that the Commission will be presenting in future, Mr Verheugen, the Commission Vice-President responsible for industry, said back in mid-September. The most worrying thing is that he made that announcement during a speech on the ‘Better Regulation’ initiative, which says a lot about the strategic direction that pernicious slogan indicates. We have seen its effects in the social field, with the ‘Services’ Directive and the Green Paper on labour law, for example. Now it is the turn of public health and the environment to be affected. The debate on what has got to change in European integration is decidedly more topical than ever."@en1
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