Niebler (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by expressing my special thanks to our rapporteur, Mr Manders, who, as we have seen him do so often in the past, has done an outstanding job of defending the environmental liability directive in the conciliation procedure, and so, this evening, let me thank him for that and also for the good personal cooperation.

This House has been working on the environmental liability directive for a long time, and it has been the subject of major and lively debate. Many of its critics were already sceptical that the directive could be adopted before the elections or enlargement. I am all the more glad, as rapporteur for the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, that tomorrow’s vote will make it possible for the directive to become a reality – and I hope that we will, tomorrow, adopt what the conciliation procedure has produced.

This is a great day for environmental protection in the European Union. This directive will, for the first time, introduce compensation for damage to protected species and habitats – what is termed purely environmental damage. Moreover, there will, for the first time, be one system of liability for the whole Community, doing away with liability loopholes whose closure was long overdue and thereby benefiting the environment, so my group very definitely welcomes the outcome of the conciliation procedure.

My group does, though, also see it as important that the conciliation procedure has produced a proportionate result, for the fact is – to use an adage quoted in the first-reading debate by Lord Inglewood, who will speak later – that the better is the enemy of the good.

Let me pick out one point that was at the heart of the debate until very recently, and which can be taken as representative of the directive’s many crucial issues: is there, or is there not, a mandatory financial security regime? My group has always rejected compulsory insurance of this kind. There are still simply insufficient reference data for a system of this sort. The purely environmental damage to which I referred at the outset cannot at present be calculated.

Together with the Council and the Commission, the Conciliation Committee addressed these misgivings, with the result that insurance will not, at first, be mandatory. Instead, the Commission is urged to submit an evaluation report six years after the directive’s entry into force, and then decide on any new approaches that are appropriate. I see this as the right way ahead.

Perhaps I may conclude by saying this on behalf of my group: let us join together in adopting what has come out of the conciliation procedure and thereby improve the protection of the environment in the European Union in the long term.