Brussels, 18/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - With the adoption, on Thursday, of the report by Cristina Garcia-Orcoyen Tormo (Parti Popular, Spain), the European Parliament approved the proposal for an Integrated Product Policy (IPP). This new Community approach is aimed at systematic improvement in the making products and services environmentally friendly throughout their life cycle, and also aims to boost supply and demand of ecological products. Following its rapporteur (see details in EUROPE of 16 January, p;15), the plenary gave more substantial content to this policy sketched out by the Commission in its Green Paper, and called for clear objectives, a timetable for implementation as well as indicators for measuring progress made by this key instrument of sustainable development policy.
The main amendments adopted call for: - environmental criteria to be introduced in public contract award procedures and for the relevant authorities to have the possibility to make suppliers comply with environmental obligations in order to promote the life cycle aspect in the context of public markets, to the advantage of development and sustainable production; - the Commission to propose new legislative measures founded on the principle of producer responsibility, after the fashion of the provisions set out in the directive concerning the ecological elimination of end-of-life vehicles and the directive relating to waste electrical and electronic equipment; - the Commission to present, as soon as possible, revision of the "new approach" directives which not only guarantee real integration of environmental concerns in the process of developing European and international standards (CEN and ISO norms) but which also specifies which environment policy decisions may be tackled through normalisation, and which decisions should be left up to the regulatory authorities in the context of transparent democratic procedures; - the voluntary agreements to be used solely as a guideline instrument if the aims have been defined by the regulatory authority in the context of a transparent democratic process, allowing for public participation, and if they are accompanied by adequate controls and the possibility that the State may impose sanctions; - the IPP and the voluntary agreements not to be a substitute for existing and future Community legislation, but rather complete it; - the constraints linked to the need to produce in a more environmentally friendly fashion to take into account the specific nature of the small and medium-sized companies, craft industry and traditional modes of production; - the Commission to examine the possibility of continuing the IPP objectives in both the OECD and the WTO; - the Environment and Trade Directorates General to closely cooperate on the question of the WTO and for the Commission to analyse the impact that global supply chains will have on IPP, the role of the IPP in the developing countries and its compatibility with WTO rules with a view to presenting, where necessary, provisions for revision of WTO rules.