Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-09-Speech-4-011-000"
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"en.20110609.3.4-011-000"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking on behalf of Mrs Mazzoni, the chair of the Committee on Petitions, who is unfortunately unable to be with us. No doubt there are more important petitions than this one. This petition does not concern thirty thousand people, as in the case for some other petitions that are pending in this House. The drivers behind this question as far as the Committee on Petitions is concerned are nature, which is a contentious matter locally, how the local economy is allowed to develop, and, above all – and I will come back to this subsequently – the uniform application of the law in the European Union.
Perhaps I might make another comment before going further. The report on this case – on this ski lift project – shows that the local media delight in seeing someone or other on the ground. It could be a lobbyist for nature, a lobbyist for business, the local authorities or the national government. That is not appropriate in this case. We went on a local fact-finding mission – Mrs Lichtenberger accompanied me – and the impression that the European Union can act as some kind of supreme court of appeal is entirely misplaced.
We have to rely to some extent on local authorities implementing the law properly. This takes us to what is at the heart of the petition. The petitioners assert that the local threshold for carrying out an environmental impact assessment (EIA), which was 20 hectares at the time, was not adhered to; that instead, the project was artificially subdivided into smaller parts and that in reality, the 20 hectare threshold was exceeded. As an aside, a 10 hectare threshold has since been introduced in Austria. Things have therefore changed somewhat in any case.
When we investigated locally, we concluded that the provisions concerning environmental impact assessments, as applicable in Austria, were complied with at the time – at least in essence. One might argue over the odd square metre or other measurement, but in our view, the dispute does not concern vast areas. Neither do we feel that consideration of individual aspects of the development would obviously lead to a different conclusion. This applies, for example, to the issue of the lake created to provide water for artificial snow, the issue of parking facilities serving the project and other aspects.
However, we came to the view that we needed to look a little more into what was behind this case. We questioned whether the way the national government had applied the law on the EIA was correct and in accordance with the spirit of our European regulations. We then soon saw that to some extent, it was possible for the provisions to be applied in different ways – not just in Austria, but also in some other Member States, including my own country.
The question arises as to whether we should always allow projects to be sliced up locally. The question arises as to whether we should allow projects to be divided into separate stages in time, if, in retrospect, one can say that actually it was all part of an overall plan and should have been looked at as a whole from the start. There are also cases of projects being subdivided locally as far as their legal arrangement is concerned, which gives rise to the question of how much this is permitted by our European legislation – deliberately or otherwise – and whether things need to be tightened up in this respect.
One particular point stood out for us in respect of such facilities. Can we really allow ski runs – new ski areas of 1, 2, 3 or 10 hectares which are added on to ski areas or which will be more heavily trafficked as a result of the expansion of existing ski facilities – to be completely disregarded in the calculations? My personal opinion is that, based on the European rules, all the areas to be used should be included in the overall project, hence our specific question to the Commission as to whether it does not feel that we need to tighten up the European regulations in this area."@en1
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