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THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION GIVES INDUSTRY A LICENSE TO POLLUTEENVIRONMENTAL NGOs CALL ON THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT TO SIGNIFICANTLY STRENGHTHEN A WEAK PROPOSAL ON ENVIRONMENTAL LIABILITY EU environmental groups have criticised the proposal for an environmental liability directive adopted yesterday by the Commission, calling it a green light for polluters. “ This proposal would only make a difference in a very limited number of accidents provoked by negligence or fault, and the burden to prove the polluter’s responsibility would be fully on competent authorities”, said Roberto Ferrigno of the European Environmental Bureau. According to the environmental NGOs, the proposal does not cover:
Environmental disasters such as the Erika oil spill, if they happened in the future, would escape the scope of the directive. Industries’ compliance with permits and licenses would be considered as legal defence in case of environmental damage. Commissioners Liikanen (Enterprise) and Busquin (Research) have been very actively supporting this provision. Thus environmental pollution caused by an emission or event allowed under applicable laws and regulations or in permits or authorisations delivered to the operator by the competent authority could be exempt from the scope of the directive. Environmental permits are generally issued by local authorities. The same bodies are deemed to take action against an operator who might have caused severe environmental pollution. This would put local authorities in the untenable position of being both the plaintiff and defendant in case of court action. They could decide to act or not or choose to restore the damage using tax payers’ money for restoration rather than the operator’s. “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” said Lorenzo Consoli from Greenpeace. Gill Lacroix of Friends of the Earth agreed that the Commission had failed to keep its promises about liability for GMOs. “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. “Industry lobbying has been allowed to dictate conditions while public concerns have been ignored. The Commission has failed to strike a balance between the different interests involved, including consideration of the different status and legitimacy that should be attributed to public interests as opposed to private and corporate interests”, said Miguel Naveso from BirdLife International. “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”. The NGOs are calling on the European Parliament and the Council to significantly amend the Commission’s proposal and 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.
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