Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-12-Speech-2-368"
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"en.20050412.33.2-368"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to thank the rapporteur for her work, and do not envy her the task she had of bringing about this compromise. Nevertheless, I do still have certain issues with this directive. In my opinion, there is no getting round the fact that the political course we are following in this directive will ultimately and primarily result in bureaucratic barriers to market entry rather than more environmentally friendly products, and in fewer businesses and jobs in the electronic and electrical engineering industries rather than greater environmental protection on the basis of reduced resource consumption.
We are continuing to rely on product and process management instead of formulating clear criteria that make sense in terms of the end product. What is stopping us from giving technicians and engineers a free hand to come up with creative ideas in the search for the best technological concepts? We will only find the best available technology, whether environment-related or otherwise, if we place no obstacles in the way of competition. The kind of product policy that has been proposed smacks to me of the targets set by the GDR’s planned economy, when decisions were taken at party conferences on how many colour televisions of a particular type would be produced within a certain space of time. Planned economies do not work, as was proven repeatedly during the 20th century, yet the Commission has apparently not yet caught on to this fact.
The directive before us is not a million miles away from being the kind of instrument one would expect to find in a planned economy, and this is above all due to the ‘top runner’ approach, the preliminary product checks and the environmental audits. I believe one can regard as only a modest success removal, by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, of the provisions in the directive that made it obligatory for environmental audits to be drawn up for the entire life cycle of a product. Differing demands continue to be made of manufacturers and importers, and the resulting problem of market distortions has not yet been resolved either. Although we have made a great deal of progress with this compromise package, the directive is still a bureaucratic nightmare for small businesses. From what I can see, the oft-repeated demand for consideration to be given to the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises is being reduced to an empty phrase. It would be the height of absurdity to add to a legislative text an article stating that small businesses must be given help with its implementation, when that text will, in all likelihood, turn out to be unworkable."@en1
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