Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-02-Speech-4-040-000"
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"en.20120202.5.4-040-000"2
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"Mr President, I would like to give my most sincere gratitude to the honourable Members for this substantive debate, which reflected the attitudes of our citizens. Let me make the following points.
First, for the Commission, the number one priority is to put in place the right sequencing of action, namely, first reuse, recycle, recover and, only if that is not possible, go for landfills based on stringent environmental impact assessments. During this process, we naturally look very seriously at the transportation of waste.
So how do we help the Member States? Through guidance and best practice, but also by scrutinising national management plans to make sure that they are adequate in helping with the problems. For the ten countries with more serious problems, we intend to carry out individual meetings to accelerate action. Obviously, when action falls short, we do not hesitate to start infringement procedures – out of 19 which have been started, nine are still ongoing – and also, as a last resort, to take Member States to the European Court of Justice for breaches of EU waste legislation. May I just stress that one third of the environmental cases concern failure to deal properly with waste management.
I completely agree that not only should we do the right thing at home, but we should also set the right example for developing countries, because a mountain of waste somewhere else would actually have implications for the status of our planet. I could not agree more with the point that has been made by Members that in these tough economic times, waste reuse, recycling and recovery is an economic opportunity and we should not miss out on a good crisis to grab it.
There was a specific question on mining waste. After the Baia Mare accident and an international Commission report, we have come up – to the best of my knowledge – with the most stringent directive in the world. We are working very closely with countries, including Romania, to make sure that the directive is respected and implemented.
Finally, a point on public awareness. We certainly need to work on that. May I just add that I spent most of my professional career working on the environment. I started because a member of my family got sick – irrevocable damage was caused to his health – because of groundwater pollution. Therefore, I fully share the emotional attitude of our citizens and our Members of Parliament."@en1
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