Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-11-Speech-1-140"
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"en.20061211.14.1-140"2
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"Mr President, I have listened carefully to the speeches of the distinguished Members of the European Parliament and I appreciate the positive and constructive contributions and the well-intentioned criticisms.
The Commission supports the compromise amendments, which, on the one hand, aim to make significant improvements in the protection of human health and the environment and, on the other, to enhance innovation and maintain economic growth.
I believe that one of the most important elements of the agreement we have on the table, as Mrs Corbey underlined, is the substitution of the most dangerous substances with safer alternatives when these are available. I can say that in certain aspects this compromise is an improvement compared with the original Commission proposal, for example the authorisation in general is stricter.
I can fully support making it obligatory for companies’ applications for authorisation to include substitution plans for substances of very high concern – manufactured or imported – if the companies have identified the availability of suitable alternatives. I can also fully agree that these substitution plans should be key factors in the decision to grant authorisations and in any further revision of such authorisations.
The vote last October in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety may have raised hopes for an even more ambitious result, as Mr Bowis said. Like many of the speakers this evening, I would also like to stay at the top of the mountain and would have preferred certain issues to have been dealt with differently in the final deal. For example, as Mr Davies and Mrs Hassi have underlined, the rules on substances which disturb the hormone system – the so-called endocrine disruptors – could be stricter.
Mrs Lucas and others do not accept that the possibility to keep the scientific names of new dangerous substances confidential for six years would be beneficial to the overall deal. This denies consumers the right to know which substances they are dealing with and it also makes it more difficult for users to identify the substances in various databases.
Last but not least, as Mrs Ek, Mrs Ferreira, and others have suggested, the obligation to provide a chemical safety report for the most dangerous substances in the lower production volumes would have been useful to further enhance worker protection. Nevertheless, as Mrs Roth-Behrendt underlined, a compromise is a compromise and this compromise package is a marked improvement for the protection of health and the environment if we compare it to the current situation.
The Commission can fully support the compromise package and I sincerely hope that Parliament will support this package during the vote on Wednesday.
Throughout this process the Commission has done its best to facilitate agreement between the Council and Parliament and to find balanced compromises. We very much welcome the convergence developed between Parliament and the Council and fully support this agreement so that REACH can be enforced by June 2007. Once again, I am grateful to Mr Sacconi and the shadow rapporteurs for their efforts to achieve this compromise."@en1
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