Brussels, 31/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Community environmental liability regime proposed by the European Commission (see EUROPE of 25 January, p.6) is far from satisfying the non-governmental organisations on protection of the environment. While the Commission considers it materialises the polluter-pays principle, a panel of European NGOs (BirdLife International, Climate Network Europe, the EEB, Friends of the Earth Europe, Friends of Nature International and Transport & Environment) does not hesitate to describe this regime as the "green light to polluters". It explains in a joint press release that it covers neither damage to biodiversity on nearly 90% of the Union territory, nor the contamination of the environment by GMOs legally authorised in the Union, nor any kind of pollution not foreseen in risk assessments according to the "state of the art" when the polluter was granted a permit.
"Environmental disasters such as the Erika oil spill, if they happened in the future, would escape the directive. Industries' compliance with permits and licenses would be considered as legal defence in case of environmental damage", stress the NGOs. They state that Commissioners Liikanen (Enterprise) and Busquin (Research) have been actively supporting this provision for exemption.
Lorenzo Consoli, spokesman for Greenpeace on issues relating to GMOs, noted that "the proposal clearly excludes from its scope any contamination from GMOs that have been authorised according to the EU rules. Thus the liability regime would apply only to contamination by non-authorised GMOs occurring in protected natural areas or harm to protected species".
Gill Lacroix, from Friends of the Earth, considers in this respect that the Commission has not kept its promises: "We were told not to worry that liability was omitted from the deliberate release directive because damage caused by GMOs would be covered by the environmental liability directive. That is very clearly not the case", she said indignantly.
Saying that "industry lobbying has been allowed to dictate conditions while public concerns have been ignored", Miguel Naveso, of Birdlife International, regrets that the Commission "has not met its commitment to deliver a proposed Directive that would, at least partially, implement strict liability and not only fault-based liability".
For all these reasons, the NGOs call on the Parliament and Council to substantially amend the Commission's proposal to make it consistent with its original objectives which are to "ensure that the polluter pays principle is properly, efficiently and extensively implemented in the EU, in the name of the citizens they represent and without sacrificing public interest to the industry's profit-oriented agenda".