Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-092"
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"en.20061211.14.1-092"2
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"Mr President, rapporteur, Commissioners Verheugen and Dimas. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I am very grateful that we can now say that a compromise has been reached in the end. The kind of things I have had to listen to over the last week: ‘Mr Florenz is an extension of the Chancellery; he is trying to enforce the will of the German chemicals industry; he even broke off the negotiations’: all nonsense. I was simply aiming to generate the pressure needed to bring the various camps in Parliament closer together – namely the health and environment policy-makers on the one hand, who are rightly very committed, and the economic policy-makers on the other. That was the problem that was not so easily solved.
I believe that we have reached a decent compromise on this. Everyone grumbles, everyone is dissatisfied, and, ultimately, that is the result of this compromise. Anyone who does not like that should not be participating in the parliamentary process. After all, things are not as simple as many of my fellow Members in the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance – whom I otherwise hold in high regard – may believe. There are various camps in this world, and that is why the debates we have held on the White Paper over the last three years have always been controversial. In my 18 years in this House, I have not experienced this as strongly with any other report as with the one on REACH. We have even seen some completely ridiculous proxy wars, and the atmosphere has not always been free of tension.
One thing that has always been clear, however, is that we have a real pillar in the form of the fact that REACH has never been called into question by the industry. I am very pleased about that. I should like to remind the two Commissioners that they have announced their intention to withdraw 40 old directives and regulations that have now been superseded. I shall check that they do. This is the challenge they face, in addition to the implementing regulations – and it is something they do really have to do, in order to give us an advantage and to enable us to thin the jungle in this field. The three-step procedure – registration, evaluation and authorisation – is spot on. The industry will have to show that it looks upon the release and disclosure of data to the Agency as part and parcel of modern economic policy rather than an end in itself. I am convinced that, where there are better alternatives, these will also be joined by environmentally friendly ones in future, subject to economic viability. These are precisely what we want to promote. It is my belief and hope that this will not harm the industry but, quite on the contrary, will promote motivation.
An important factor all along has been our focus on producer responsibility. This is not an end in itself, but is something that the industry must do in future. The matter of imports remains unresolved; this has not been sufficiently regulated, in my opinion. To conclude, one contentious issue is that of the disclosure of data. We need a political debate over how much of their know-how enterprises have to divulge. We obviously need consumer protection, but we also need to protect our enterprises, who provide our employment from Monday to Friday."@en1
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