Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-090"
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"en.20061211.14.1-090"2
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"Mr President, my father worked for more than 20 years in the heavy chemicals industry in Sundsvall in northern Sweden. Sometimes, he came home in the evenings with pain in his arms and legs. Sometimes, he was almost completely paralysed and had difficulty moving them. According to the doctor, he was suffering from acute metal poisoning. My father is now retired, and a number of the heavy metals by which he was affected are now banned. However, millions of workers are still affected by chemicals in European workplaces. According to a Finnish study, 32 million EU citizens are exposed every day to carcinogenic chemicals in their workplaces. It is for all these workers that we need a strong REACH.
As has already been mentioned in quite a few very good speeches made earlier in this House, we also need a strong REACH for the environment and for all those of us who are consumers. That, however, is precisely why I am so disappointed that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and also the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe have caved in to the chemicals industry and to the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats. This proposal fails workers, consumers and the environment. Mr Sacconi, you probably know better than any of us what workers are calling for. Workers want to see a strong REACH in which dangerous chemicals are substituted when there are better alternatives, to give just one example. Yet you have abandoned the basic principle. Is that because power and loyalty to the PPE-DE Group are more important? I do not know.
We in the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left cannot support this proposal. Why? Let me give some concrete examples. This compromise contains no chemical safety report for low volume substances. This means that thousands of chemicals will continue to be distributed without our knowing what real risks they present. There is no legally binding duty of care and, in the light of this, we need to remember that the basic idea behind REACH was precisely that there should be such a duty and that, specifically, the burden of proof in connection with chemicals should lie with companies and not with the authorities. Big companies will be able to keep the facts about the chemicals they use secret once the PPE-DE Group has had its demands accepted for an enhanced intellectual property law. Small companies, which will not be able to benefit from increased transparency, will be the big losers.
The obviously legitimate demand that the Member States should be able to have more far-reaching legislation has not been approved, either. Above all, what should have been a gain in terms of public health and the environment now rings hollow, namely the substitution principle. This principle, which states that dangerous chemicals must be replaced when there are less dangerous alternatives, is now so restricted that it is only a very small number of chemicals that will be phased out. As a result, we shall still be surrounded by thousands of dangerous chemicals that are carcinogenic or toxic for reproduction or that have endocrine disruptive effects.
We in the GUE/NGL Group want to save REACH. We have therefore, together with the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, submitted a common REACH package involving amendments requiring stronger wording in all these areas. In order to minimise the number of animal experiments, we also call for efforts to implement completely new animal-free methods involving ‘toxigenomics’. The demands we are making are not unreasonable, since a good deal of them were supported by a majority of this House a year ago. In conclusion, we shall, on Wednesday, be voting on what is to be the world’s most comprehensive chemicals law. There is still a chance of saving REACH, and I would call on you – especially you Socialists who claim to protect workers and the environment – to throw this PPE-DE Group agreement in the waste paper bin and to vote in favour of saving REACH."@en1
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