Strasbourg, 15/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament will be discussing Cristina Garcia-Orcoyen Tormo's (Popular Party, Spain) report on the Commission's Green Paper on an Integrated Products Policy (IPP) that calls on the European Parliament to commit itself to next week's project elaborating a new approach that aims to systematically improve the environmental performance of products and services during their life-cycle, as well as boosting the availability and consumption of ecological products, on the condition that the content of this policy is strengthened in a sensitive manner. MEPs see the IPP as an indispensable instrument in the policy of sustainable development and a useful complementary tool for Community legislation but also consider that the direction taken by the Commission will not allow for the intended aim to be achieved. They are therefore pushing for a broader and better elaborated policy that takes the different elements in the chain of production more clearly into account - raw materials, energy consumption, packaging and transport. They also consider that a more far reaching study on the results and weak points of the current IPP will be needed to achieve this aim: community eco-labels, an environmental and auditing management system, Directive on packaging and waste from packing etc;). In this connection the rapporteur is calling for the plenary to encourage the Commission to wait before presenting its White Paper on IPP and to sufficiently take into account the MEPs' points of view that will be expressed at Strasbourg next week.
If the plenary agrees with the Environmental Committee, it will focus its demands on: 1) modalities for granting and controlling future eco-labels being clearly defined; 2) that clear objectives are set out, as well as an IPP time-table and that the methods and indicators for measuring the progress of IPP are coherent and reflect environmental priorities and the most important environmental aspects for each range of products; that they are established by consensus and regularly revised; 4) that the IPP aims to significantly reduce the total incidence of dangerous products currently circulating, by a clearly defined time-table; 5) that the IPP includes more legal instruments and is in no case used to replace or weaken relevant Community legislation; 6) that it is applied in stages to product categories that are progressively increased; 7) that the European Commission critically assesses the progress and weaknesses of "New Approach" Directives in order to ensure that they comply with the IPP objectives and that they examine the current models for consumers, and research the possibilities for replacing the products, whenever possible, by services; 8) that the Commission launches as soon as possible appropriate pilot studies; 9) that the economic consequences are taken into account, as well as training and social aspect of the Integrated Products Policy, in full knowledge that all actors will be participating in it (producers, consumers and administrative bodies); 10) that restraints linked to the need to produce more ecologically does not penalise SMEs, craft-bases firms and traditional modes of production: with this in mind the environmental indicators are based on a simplified assessment of the life-cycle of the products; 11) that services - particularly transport and tourism are included in the field of IPP application (the Parliamentary Committee deplores the insufficient consideration with which they have been treated, despite their undesirable and increasing impact on the environment); 12) that the prices of products accurately reflect the environmental costs of products and the ecological conceptions on which they are based; 13) that incentives (financial aid or tax breaks such as reduced VAT) are encouraged rather than measures that penalise, in the availability of ecological products; 14) that the Commission reduces or gets rid of subsidies that damage IPP objectives; 15) that the Commission examines the possibility of pursuing IPP objectives at an OECD and WTO level.