Text tabled : A6-0227/2007

  Georgios Toussas (GUE/NGL), in writing. – (EL) Even though it recognises that there is currently no absolutely safe method of storing metallic mercury, the report endeavours to legalise a special type of territorial 'racism', by imposing the choice of the Spanish province of Almaden as the site for permanent landfill of the most toxic element on the planet. The worst thing is that it endeavours to justify the imposition of this specific area with the existence there of infrastructures and 'manpower'. In other words, it is using unemployment as a means of blatant coercion of the workers, so that they agree to turn their area into a landfill for toxic mercury waste from the entire EU, with incalculable risks to the health of the inhabitants and the environment.

The proposal in the report for the involvement and funding of all sorts of NGOs in the crucial question of the application of mercury-free technologies in developing countries and in so-called 'economies in transition' comes under the same dangerous policy by circumventing the rules which derive from binding bilateral agreements in this sector.

That is why the Greek Communist Party abstained from the vote.

The Greek Communist Party maintains that the question of where metallic mercury should be stored and managed is a subject for science and the application of its conclusions and not of choices that reflect the interests and profits of business.