Brussels, 20/08/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), which is a federation of 133 environmental citizens' organisations for protection of the environment, has published a memorandum in which it puts its expectations to the Italian EU Council Presidency. It also expresses its fears concerning the simplification and rationalisation of the Italian environment policy currently in progress. According to the EEB, such reforms for deregulation will "set back Italian environmental protection by 20 years and are in full breach of most of the existing EU environmental legislation". Also, "Italy runs the risk of being the first industrialised country that is offering a convenient base for environmental criminals".
As far as the term of Italian Presidency is concerned, the EEB above all trusts that the next Intergovernmental Conference will revise Part III of the draft presented by the Convention on Union policies, in order to ensure that all policies, including environmental policy, make a concrete contribution to sustainable development. The EEB also requests that a Protocol on sustainable development be added to the Treaty and that the Euratom Treaty should gradually be phased out.
The EEB sets ten tests on the environment to the Italian Presidency. In addition to the IGC, it involves:
- The new European policy on chemical products. The EEB mainly requests that the Environment Council should play the key role in negotiations on this policy, and that imported products should comply with the same safety standards as those imposed on EU-made products.
- Climate change. The EEB invites the Presidency to pursue the work carried out so far with the same intensity on the Directive with a view to a system of greenhouse gas emission trading, and to step up the pressure on Russia so that it ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore, the EEB considers the "EU must seek to build stronger links with the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and counter the obstruction of the OPEC countries, especially Saudi Arabia".
- GMOs. The EEB welcomes the adoption of the Directive on traceability and labelling. The Member States, however, have still to adopt measures allowing coexistence, without contamination, between conventional/organic crops and genetically modified crops. The Italian Presidency is therefore called upon to work towards maintaining the GMO moratorium, until clear and stringent rules have been set in place.
- Public procurement. The EEB mainly presses for a European legislation that will provide obligations to protect public health and to preserve the environment and natural resources for future generations.
- Environmental governance. The Spring Summit this year called upon the Council to adopt by mid-2004 proposals for a Directive on access to justice and for a legislative instrument setting out how the EU Institutions will comply with the provisions under all three pillars of the Aarhus Convention on access to information and public participation in the decision-making process when environmental matters are concerned. The Italian Presidency must speed up this work in order to keep to the deadlines set by the Heads of State and Government, the EEB states.
- Air pollution from shipping. According to the EEB, "For many years, ships have been regarded as a sort of free zone, exempted from most environmental standards. (…) While it is true that ships have many environmental advantages over other modes of transportation, they can make no claim to environmental respectability so long as they go on polluting the air with their great emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides".
- Seveso II Directive (which completes the first Directive by the same name on the prevention of major accidents in industrial installations, by adding a further 400 high-risk installations). The EEB hopes that the Directive will be extended to cover chemical and thermal operations as well as potassium nitrate. To this end, the EEB recommends the establishment of a database of risk data and risk scenarios as well as personnel training. It also proposes the introduction of appropriate financial incentives to the relocation of companies which do not fit the appropriate safety distance.
- Subsidies. The EEB calls on the Ecofin Council to prepare a proposal for the Spring Summit 2004 for reform of subsidies that may have a problematical impact on the environment.