Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-16-Speech-1-101"
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"en.20080616.20.1-101"2
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"Mr President, as the rapporteur is a member of my group and a close colleague, the House will understand if I defend her agreement. Perhaps we could have done more, perhaps another chemical here or there could have been included in the package, but scientific opinion is divided; political will is not always strong. In the words of the previous rapporteur, this can reasonably be described as ‘as good as it gets’.
I think water policy is one of the successes of European environment policy. I think that we should pay tribute to the work of the Commission over the years and indeed to Mrs Lienemann for her work on the Water Framework Directive some seven years ago. Even when no transboundary issues are involved, the collective determination to address the pollution of both past and present years has brought about levels of investment to secure improvement in water quality that have far exceeded what would have been achieved if Member States had been left to act in isolation. The laws we have put in place are clear in this instance. Pollution is identifiable and measurable. The requirements to prevent it are enforceable and this legislation takes us a step forward by introducing further prohibitions on a range of chemicals, pesticides, pollutants that present a risk to aquatic and indeed human life.
But we also see reports from the European Environment Agency that there are many instances of Member States still failing to enforce the legislation as effectively and as adequately as should be the case. So on this note of agreement across the House about the nature of this legislation and the positive direction in which Europe is going when it comes to water quality, let us also look to the Commission to say, ‘You have the powers to investigate, to act and to enforce – please use them’."@en1
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