Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-156"
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"en.20061212.37.2-156"2
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".
Water is the basis of all life, and in this sense, a matter of life and death. The European Environmental Agency regards the situation as serious: 87% of groundwater in agricultural areas fails to meet EU standards on the presence of nitrates, and most of the Member States have reported on the risk of contamination by pesticides. A strict new Groundwater Directive is therefore of vital importance.
The text approved by the conciliation committee deserves our support. This House has managed to make the notion of ‘protection against quantitative decline’ legally binding. Moreover, steps have been taken to ensure that the measures for achieving the quality standard for nitrates draw on the Water Framework Directive. More emphatic demands are also made of Member States and regions to prevent and reduce the introduction of dangerous substances into groundwater. They are now required to ‘take’ all the measures necessary, and not just to ‘strive towards’ them. The result at first reading was, from an environmental point of view, a huge disappointment, and the Council's common position was also a complete disaster. These have now been put right at second reading in this House and the subsequent conciliation procedure. As we should be pleased with the outcome, I have endorsed the agreement reached."@en1
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