Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2015-03-09-Speech-1-196-000"
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"en.20150309.15.1-196-000"2
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"Madam President, I did not sign this oral question. I thought about it very carefully, and one of the reasons is that it presupposes that the criteria for classification of substances as endocrine disruptors is a simple scientific decision that everyone in the scientific community can agree with. Well it is not. The author of the question attested just tonight that if the criteria for EDCs had been published, the entire issue of endocrine disrupters would have been solved, and this is clearly not the case. It is simply not the case. I have just come from the meeting of the Committee on the Environment where Mr Timmermans has been extolling the virtues of impact assessments, with seemingly the majority of Members agreeing with him, so I can assume that the signatories are not against impact assessments per se. I can only conclude that it is part of the ongoing campaign to oversimplify this issue by ignoring the safeguards that are already in place, not least through legislation such as REACH.
So what is this all about? The wording asserting that 31 substances would be banned if a blocked EU paper on hormone—mimicking chemicals had been acted upon comes straight from a document produced by the NGO Pesticide Action Network. This pan—analysis has been challenged by many scientists. This will always be the case. Sometimes scientific consensus emerges, but very rarely complete agreement. This is an ongoing discussion in the scientific community, which is divided on how best to identify and regulate endocrine—disrupters.
The World Health Organization has acknowledged that existing data are not able to demonstrate a causal link between exposure to EDs and adverse health effects. They quite clearly say that. The issue is further complicated by the different regulatory processes that exist in different pieces of sectoral legislation – a hazard—based approach in plant protection products and a risk—based approach in biocides – so we cannot even get that right.
I think the Commission is taking a sensible approach to this very difficult issue. I have been contacted by constituents in my region expressing concern about the potential socio—economic effects, and I do not think that those should be ignored."@en1
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