[autom.vertaling] Grensoverschrijdende verzendingen van afval onder toezicht (en)

Europe's prosperity has a downside: the amount of waste that sometimes fills its dustbins to overflowing. Despite efforts made over the years to cut waste generation at source, rubbish continues to pile up. There is now a large crossborder trade in waste - not to speak of illegal trafficking - and controls are often light or non-existent. On Monday 3 October new legislation designed to deal with this problem came up before Parliament's Environment Committee.

The committee's recommendation for second reading, drafted by Johannes BLOKLAND (IND/DEM, NL), was adopted by 23 votes to 18 with 4 abstentions and will come before the full Parliament in late October in Strasbourg (*).

This legislation is in fact not particularly new. It is intended to replace an EU regulation of 1993 which has proved ineffective. Since that date the European market in waste has grown and flourished. Hence the need for the new regulation, to clarify the rules and procedures and also incorporate more recent standards issued by the OECD in 2001 and the Basle Convention as amended in 1998.

What should be allowed and what banned? On three key points, the committee did not back Mr Blokland's suggestions. Hoping to reduce movements of waste, he said that waste transfers should not be authorised if the waste can be processed in the country which produces it. He also believed that authorisation to export waste for purposes of recovery should be granted only if the recovery will be "final" (as opposed to "interim"), the aim being to prevent a build-up of stocks of hazardous substances or shipments of waste for "sham recovery". Lastly, Mr Blokland argued that animal by-products should be covered by the regulation. But on all three points, MEPs who prefer to allow the free movement of waste within the EU in line with the rules of the single market won the day, thus agreeing with the Council's common position.

Hunting down the ghost ships

However, the Environment Committee took a tougher line than the Council on a number of points. It says ships and aircraft should be included in the list of potentially dangerous waste and it wants a ban on exporting ships due for scrapping to non-EU countries, unless they are completely stripped of all dangerous substances. MEPs want to tighten up the rules requiring Member States to inspect waste cargoes and provide information to the public. They also amended the Council's text so as to discourage exports of household rubbish.

Criticism of the Commission

Although MEPs were divided in their votes, during the debate they voiced unanimous surprise at the stance of the European Commission, which last week unilaterally published a list of legislation it plans to drop or - as in the case of the regulation on waste - on which it says further impact studies are needed. "The EPP was extremely surprised at this step by Commissioner Verheugen", said Maria del Pilar AYUSO GONZALEZ (EPP-ED, ES), who wondered whether Environment Commissioner Stavros DIMAS felt the same. She was also astonished that a regulation on which Parliament was in the process of voting might be called into question. The Commission representative at Monday's meeting simply referred MEPs to the note published by his institution last week, even though this contains no specific discussion of the issue of waste. It was left to Mr Blokland to explain that, as far as he knew, the assessments would be internal and additional, and would not challenge the legislation already in the pipeline.

(*) Amendments at second reading are only adopted in plenary if supported by a majority of Members of Parliament, i.e. at least 367. It is possible that some amendments adopted by a narrow majority in committee will not be adopted.

03/10/2005

Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Chair : Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP-ED, DE)

Procedure: Co-decision, 2nd reading

Plenary: October II