Go back to the Europarl portal

Choisissez la langue de votre document :

  • bg - български
  • es - español
  • cs - čeština
  • da - dansk
  • de - Deutsch
  • et - eesti keel
  • el - ελληνικά
  • en - English (Selected)
  • fr - français
  • ga - Gaeilge
  • hr - hrvatski
  • it - italiano
  • lv - latviešu valoda
  • lt - lietuvių kalba
  • hu - magyar
  • mt - Malti
  • nl - Nederlands
  • pl - polski
  • pt - português
  • ro - română
  • sk - slovenčina
  • sl - slovenščina
  • fi - suomi
  • sv - svenska
 Index 
 Full text 
Verbatim report of proceedings
Thursday, 2 February 2012 - Brussels OJ edition

Application of waste management directive (debate)
MPphoto
 

  Julie Girling, on behalf of the ECR Group. – Mr President, I would like to give a very strong welcome to this report on behalf of my group. I am involved in Parliament with waste management via my membership of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and I have to say how interesting and refreshing it was to read this report from a slightly different perspective, because it does take out a lot of what I might call the vested interests (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) – people who have their views and have had them for a long time and have worked very hard to get what they want through. Sometimes, it is difficult to lift your head up and look at the big picture, so a report such as this, I think, is really very useful.

Of course it is about a subject which very clearly and very closely concerns all of the people that we represent. There are very few subjects for me as a constituency MEP that I get quite so much passion from my voters about as waste management. I feel that it is an area in which we, the European Parliament, stand to be judged. If we do not get it right and if we do not make sure that we enforce, then all of the talking that we do here comes to nothing. All of that is encompassed in this very interesting and useful report.

There are huge differences in the way that Member States deal with the problem of rubbish, and I actually welcome the fact that we have those differences. I welcome the fact that this report recognises very strongly the issue of subsidiarity. It is about a Waste Framework Directive. Many of you will remember my predecessor, the lady that I replaced in this Parliament – Caroline Jackson – who was the rapporteur on the Waste Framework Directive. One of the principles that she was very keen on espousing was that Member States should be allowed as much subsidiarity as possible within the framework of tight and challenging targets. I know from recent conversations with her that she is extremely disappointed that, having been given that freedom, Member States are not delivering, because we are not making those targets.

Where we need to really tighten up – and this is in the report – is not on a whole raft of new regulations but on making those that we currently have work better and more effectively. A framework is just that. We need to get our Member States working towards that framework. I was really shocked here to see how many infringements there are in my own Member State – I thought we were doing OK. So in that sense, this is a great report for bringing that home.

Just on one point: I am happy to defend nuclear energy. But it has to be done with good technology, tightly controlled. The same is the case for incineration.

 
Legal notice - Privacy policy