Brussels, 15/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - Was Hungary, which is still dealing with the consequences of the torrent of red mud which burst forth on 4 October, fully complying with current EU environmental legislation, and should this legislation not have prevented this major disaster in both human and environmental terms? Without all the facts and out of reserve, no one was saying at the Environment Council.
The matter, “added to the agenda so that the Hungarian minister could explain to us what happened,” as Council President Joke Schauvliege put it, was raised informally by the Council in Luxembourg on Thursday 14 October. No conclusions have been drawn at this point, but everyone stressed that “lessons have to be learnt” from this major industrial accident, which WWF says could have been avoided but for loopholes in the European legislation specially adopted after similar mining accidents (Baia Mare, Romania in 2000, and Donana, southern Spain in 1998).
When asked by press for his point of view, European Environment Commissioner Janez Potoènik said it was too soon to make comments but intends to find out what happened. “We have expressed our solidarity with the victims. The most important thing for the moment is to make sure the situation is stabilised, prevent the spread of the pollution and get clean-up operations started,” he said, expressing his satisfaction with the “coordination among the five clean-up experts sent by member states and the Commission expert” who are working on the ground to assess the impact of the red flood on the environment and ecosystems.
Potoènik accepts that “something went wrong” and that “we'll have to see how the legislation is applied because the cost of prevention is insignificant when compared with the lives lost and the impact of such a disaster on the economy and the environment”. Prevention is the main objective of the directive on industrial pollution (a beefed-up version of the former IPPC Directive) and “licences to operate must be taken seriously”. The commissioner also spoke of the directive on the management of mining waste which will have to be transposed by May 2012 and which requires installations at risk to be identified and emergency plans put in place. The Seveso II Directive is also an important text “but I don't want to draw hasty conclusions,” the commissioner said. (A.N./transl.rt)