Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 19 September 2001 - Brussels

12. Air pollution

  President. – The next item is a joint debate on the following reports.

- A5-0293/2001 drawn up by Mrs Oomen-Ruijten on behalf of Parliament's Delegation to the Conciliation Committee, on the joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee for a European Parliament and Council directive on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from large combustion plants, and

- A5-0293/2001 drawn up by Mrs Riitta Myller on behalf of Parliament's Delegation to the Conciliation Committee, on the joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee for a European Parliament and Council directive on national emission ceilings for certain atmospheric pollutants.

  Oomen-Ruijten (PPE-DE), rapporteur. – (NL) Mr President, it is nearly three years since the Commission tabled a proposal for a directive amending the rules on the emission of pollutants from large combustion plants. After those three years, we have this week finally reached completion of this – what I believe to be – very important dossier. Nobody will blame me for saying that we have travelled an arduous road, a road that has also been peppered with painful experiences.

We have met with a great deal of opposition, not only on the part of a number of Member States, but also among some fellow MEPs. There have been strong warnings and protests from interested parties, also from the electricity industry in some Member States. Despite this, we managed to amend without any problem the original regulation in the form it was submitted and which, in my opinion – and that shared by a few fellow MEPs – was far too weak. After all, the technical possibilities are not lacking, and in a large number of the EU Member States, those rules which we incorporated at first reading have long since been prescribed and form part of regular policy.

The original Commission proposal to amend the directive from 1998 was, according to the majority of this House, not a huge success. Regulation was too weak and moreover, existing plants were excluded from the directive’s scope. We as the European Parliament have collectively given real significance to the environmental policy, and I should once again like to extend a warm thanks to all the fellow MEPs who contributed to this. We have demonstrated what it means if we really want to do something about this filthy air pollution, which is so harmful to people. We as Parliament made great improvements to emission standards at first reading, and we also brought existing combustion plants within the scope of the directive.

Then came the Council’s collective standpoint. This was arrived at with the greatest difficulty, it has to be said. Legislation was tightened up to some extent, but the European Parliament’s wish for existing combustion plants to be brought within the scope of the directive was accommodated. But alas, each country stipulated its own exceptions, and had it been up to the Council of Ministers, we would have continued using old, outdated polluting plants ad infinitum.

In our opinion, the common position lacked all vision. It had become a pick-and-mix with something for everyone. If I compare this with the regulations which currently apply in Japan and the United States, we, who all want things to be done just so, would have cut a very poor figure with the Council’s emission regulations during the discussions on Kyoto.

There were calls that it was not necessary to prescribe regulations for combustion plants because this was to be addressed by Mrs Myller’s very fine report on emission ceilings, and that there was therefore no need to interfere as a European authority until those emission ceilings were in place, for everything was to be regulated on that basis, every Member State adopting them as a binding measure. But things on that front too ultimately took a different turn.

If we were to meet the expectations of those in favour of liberalising the energy market, in other words, if we did not prescribe any regulations or if we agreed to exceptions in order to generate electricity using old, polluting power stations, we believe that the market mechanism would be disrupted, and those who neglect the environment would be rewarded with a head-start, because they would be able to charge lower energy prices with their old power stations.

Since the Council refused to accept Parliament’s amendments, we had to resort to conciliation, whereby the present report was combined with the report by Mrs Riitta Myller. I would like to thank her too. She proved to be an excellent partner in those negotiations.

In fact, during the trilogue with the Swedish Presidency and the Commission in May and June of this year, considerable progress was made straight away where the emission reduction of SO2, sulphur dioxide and a number of major technical topics were concerned. As for NOx and the nitrogen oxides, progress was only made with the greatest difficulty. At the trilogue, agreement was reached provisionally on the Commission’s obligation to extend monitoring – for which we have Mr Hans Blokland to thank – to include emissions of heavy metals.

In addition, the Council met Parliament half-way and deleted certain exceptions, especially for certain plants which are fired with solid fuels and native brown coal. Unfortunately, during the first meeting, we failed to reach genuine agreement on what strikes me as the most important point, namely NOx.

After first reading, we made huge progress when the Council agreed to allow old plants to be brought within the scope of the directive. That was important because those old plants are often least efficient in terms of energy, and also emit a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases. By means of the compromise achieved by conciliation, the European Parliament managed to tighten the proposed limits for SO2 and NOx. The Council agreed, straight away in fact, to a considerable reduction in SO2, especially for the medium-size and large combustion plants, for that is where it matters most.

With regard to NOx emissions, we as Parliament upheld the reduction of NOx limits for large combustion plants between 650 mg per cubic metre and 200 mg for those plants which run on solid fuels. These limits, however, only apply from 2016 to new and existing plants. That is, in fact, too late. As I stated earlier, a number of Member States introduced these standards some three years ago. We did not object to this for it marked a huge step forward, also in view of the fact that this is an important condition which we will soon be able to apply to the candidate countries.

Furthermore, we managed to reduce the exception which the Council wanted for peak-load power stations, with the result that the polluting emission can be curtailed in this respect too.

All in all, I am therefore of the opinion that conciliation produced a satisfactory agreement and that we went much further than we deemed possible at second reading. I thank the Swedish Presidency. I thank all my fellow MEPs, especially Mrs Myller. I thank the Commission for its constructive support. I would therefore recommend, also on behalf of the delegation, that this proposal be adopted.

  Myller (PSE), rapporteur. – (FI) Mr President, Commissioner, Parliament’s objective with respect to this directive was to achieve the strictest possible ceilings for air emissions responsible for acidification. Acidification, ground-level ozone, and soil eutrophication are interconnected problems caused by emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds and ammonia. It seems only reasonable to examine these problems together, as in that way we could succeed in reducing emissions in the most cost-effective way.

On this basis, the Commission in its proposal had calculated for each Member State the ceilings they should achieve by the year 2010. In both the fifth environmental action programme and its acidification strategy, the Community – the European Union – laid down its objective to guarantee that people would be protected from all known air pollutants. The Commission stated in its proposal that at this stage it was unable to set ‘final targets’ for critical loads and levels: to achieve a final, long-term objective it was necessary to proceed via some interim target values, which the Commission set for 2001.

Except with regard to ammonia, Parliament approved the Commission’s targets in its second reading, with the addition of a long-term objective. In Parliament’s view, the interim target values should be achieved by 2010, and the final objective, whereby people would be protected throughout the EU from all known atmospheric pollutants, should be achieved by 2020. By the time it had reached the conciliation stage all positions were clear, and the Council clearly gave us to understand that it was unable to alter the figures, which it had approved within the framework of a common position. Neither was it prepared to approve the long-term objective on the grounds that the demand that critical levels and loads should not be exceeded in any area was not, in the opinion of the Council and the Commission too, technically feasible. The Council’s common position on emission ceilings was a long way from the Commission’s figures relatively speaking, but, nevertheless, better than the ‘Gothenburg’ values that most of the Member States had sworn by.

Approval of the Council’s common position would have meant that we would have been raising our hands in favour of improving air quality and protecting the health of our citizens. At the conciliation stage, after some considerable amount of arm wrestling, with the Commission busy producing compromises, the main principles of the directive were pulled in the direction of Parliament’s views. During conciliation the Commission’s and Parliament’s stricter emission limits were approved as indicative values and the Council’s common position was recognised as binding on Member States. Indicativeness means the Commission is obliged to reappraise the directive in its reports for 2004 and 2008, taking account of future scientific and technological developments and hence the possibility of achieving stricter emission limits. With these investigations it must also be considered to what extent the long-term objectives can be achieved by 2020. The result of conciliation was thus to give the Commission the tools to make the directive’s target levels stricter and require it to study reductions in emissions in the long-term also, the aim being that critical levels and loads are not exceeded and that people really are protected effectively from all atmospheric pollutants. It was quite an achievement to have this long-term objective included in an Article of the directive, but it was perhaps the most important accomplishment during conciliation. The emission sources causing acidification that are the hardest to deal with are emissions from aircraft and ships. We have made progress in this area too, and the Commission is being asked to propose measures to deal with this problem.

I would also like to thank Ria Oomen-Ruijten for her excellent show of co-operation during conciliation. It was really most significant that the directive on large combustion plants was dealt with so successfully, as it will be a key instrument in helping to carry through this directive on emissions ceilings. I also want to thank the President of Parliament’s delegation, the Members, the representatives of the Commission and Sweden, as the country holding the presidency at the time, for their excellent show of co-operation.

  Jackson (PPE-DE). – Mr President, I would like to congratulate both the Parliament's rapporteurs on the hard work that they put in. They produced a result which they can be proud of. It was produced after an immense amount of work very late at night. However, speaking as a British Member of the European Parliament there were enormous difficulties about these directives, particularly the Large Combustion Plants Directive. I want to focus on the point that we laboured under the enormous difficulty that neither the Commission nor the Council really came clean about the impact of what they were proposing. Nor did they give us an accurate assessment or help us assess the impact of what the European Parliament was proposing.

Mr Bowe and I, as British Members of the European Parliament, were faced with lobbies from Britain basically saying that if we adopted the Parliament's amendments, the British coal mines which are still in production would all have to close down. We were therefore faced with the possibility of voting for amendments and voting for reports from our own committee which would have had a very serious economic impact in our own Member State.

When we went to the Council of Ministers meeting, we found that there were other Member States with exactly the same problems, Finland, for example, where the ministers and governments of those countries had never really contacted their Members of the European Parliament to explain the difficulties they thought they were going to have. We also had the extraordinary situation, when we got to the codecision meeting, where four civil servants delivered speeches that really should have been made by ministers.

The point I want to make is this. We need two things: we need much greater honesty from Member States and the Commission about the actual impact in the Member States of what is being proposed and what is being discussed. There should at least be some advice on that. Secondly, when we go to the codecision meetings we must stop having meetings between fifteen MEPs, one minister, and fourteen civil servants. That is ridiculous. Many of the points made to us on the reports by Mrs Oomen-Ruijten and Mrs Myller should have been made by ministers. It is ministers we want to meet when we go to the codecision meetings.

  Bowe (PSE). – Mr President, I will just simply say first as a British Member, that I would endorse what Mrs Jackson said.

Only the people in this room really know just how much work both the rapporteurs did to reach this final position and to get these two reports as proposals to this Parliament for a final vote. We are your peers and we know how much hard work you did and we congratulate you both on that work. It has been a very long time and this is one of the most difficult reports I have seen in twelve years in Parliament.

Finally though, despite all the difficulties and even the final conciliation, we have a workable and practical proposal. It is not going to be easy. It is going, in fact, to be extremely hard with regard to some of the requirements, but it strikes a satisfactory balance between the protection of the environment on the one hand and society's need for a reliable and secure source of power at an affordable price, which is something we cannot ignore.

Changes are going to have to take place to meet the requirements of this proposal. The power industry will undoubtedly be required to replace some old plant, hopefully by some more modern sources of power generation. There is going to be a substantial reduction in sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions which are the main causes of acid rain and ground-level ozone with a consequent improvement in the environmental conditions for human health. One possible side effect may be that as the general efficiency of power plant operation improves, we will see an overall reduction in carbon dioxide in comparison to the energy generated. That would be a helpful and useful side effect of this legislation.

It will not be easy to put all these measures into place. There is a long time scale. That is acceptable and understandable in these circumstances, so on behalf of the Socialist Group, I welcome these proposals and we will give them our support in the vote tomorrow.

  Evans, Jillian (Verts/ALE). – Mr President, I would like to welcome both the directives and congratulate both rapporteurs as other Members have done. I have particularly followed the debate on the limitation of emissions of large combustion plants. These plants are one of the biggest emitters of air pollutants in Europe after transport emissions and therefore it is very important we have stringent legislation to control this. The inclusion of existing plants is a major improvement on former legislation. It means there will be a level playing field for all plants including the worst polluters and some plants in the applicant countries, which can generate electricity more cheaply because they have fewer controls and do not have to meet the same standards.

Again, as other Members have said, we can reassure people that because of the various derogations and allowances for lower standards, which were built into the final compromise text, current power stations such as Aberthaw in my own constituency are under no threat. Aberthaw coal-fired power station has been the subject of considerable press and media attention due to perceived threats to its viability and its profitability from this directive. In fact the opposite is true. The directive will actually protect jobs in the Welsh coal and generating industries in the longer term.

This has been a very important debate, because it has shown that there is not a straight choice between cleaner air standards and employment, as some would have us believe. Work to combat pollution can go hand-in-hand with protecting jobs and sustaining communities.

My group also supports the compromise which tightens the limit values for sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and introduces generally stronger standards. The group also supports the results of the conciliation on Mrs Myller's report on the National Emission Ceilings Directive and we will be voting in favour of that too.

  Blokland (EDD). – (NL) Mr President, I will confine myself to air pollution caused by large combustion plants. I am still of the opinion that the outcome of conciliation has been overtaken by the current technical potential to reduce polluting emissions. Bizarre exemption provisions were left in the directive, as well as the permission for large old combustion plants to pollute for 2 000 hours per year, and the exceptions for Spain, Crete and Rhodes.

Existing plants will continue to pollute the air enormously by emitting sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Particularly with regard to nitrogen oxides, the outcome of the conciliation is saddening, since at the moment, the standards in the United States already far outstrip those which will not come into force for a number of years in the European Union.

Moreover, we already notice that much biomass is being used as a supplement in coal-fired power plants. For these, far less stringent emission standards apply compared to waste incineration plants. I should have known that as a result of the liberalisation of the energy market, equal environmental conditions would be used to prevent distortion of competition.

In conclusion, the reason why I shall be voting in favour of this directive is not that it will effectively fight air pollution, but because, compared to the previous directive, this new directive is the lesser of two evils.

  Korhola (PPE-DE). – (FI) Mr President, my colleague, Ria Oomen-Ruijten, deserves praise for her work as rapporteur at all three stages of the reading of the directive on large combustion plants. We have before us now a revised directive that can be expected to have an important impact on reducing emissions from large combustion plants, at the same time, however, taking account of the practical realities of life. I am grateful for having been involved in tabling the amendments of compromise and that first the rapporteur and then Parliament adopted them. These amendments are still visible in this directive even after conciliation and, among other things, make possible combined heat and power production, which is essential from the point of view of sustainable development. At first there was a danger that the directive would have made CHP unprofitable. That would clearly have meant a step backwards.

Mrs Oomen-Ruijten’s report, like that of my colleague Mrs Myller, are examples of how the codecision procedure can also achieve a successful end result when the subject-matter is very difficult and demanding. These two directives are obviously in this category.

National limits for emissions and emissions from large energy plants are matters in which Member States have traditionally looked after their own interests and tried to prevent the setting of targets that could jeopardise the competitiveness of Member States themselves or that of the EU as a whole. The Commission had to take this into account when drafting its proposal. Parliament too, for all its idealism, had to take account of political realities. In spite of this, the result can be considered to be an ambitious one. It will be important right away as far as air quality in Europe is concerned. In addition, it indicates something important for the future: the EU is ready to work to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol within the framework of practical policy as well.

We still expect the Commission to make several important proposals this autumn to combat climatic change. The two reports now to be decided on promise good results. The EU institutions are capable of producing a balanced result, from which we can expect challenging results. In the face of the facts of climatic change anything less is out of the question.

  Lange (PSE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the two rapporteurs for their tenacity and commitment. I have no doubt that these were essential qualities during the negotiations with the Council, especially in the discussions about large combustion plants. This House was determined to ensure that old plants were included in this directive as well, and finally achieved this goal. This is a key area in which we have been successful.

However, we have not been entirely successful. We have had to accept a great many derogations, extensions and lower limit values, not because no other option was technically feasible – for otherwise we would frequently have been accused of trying to achieve the impossible. In this instance, it is quite obvious that upgrading existing plants to meet the standards in modern installations presents no problems from a technical point of view. Indeed, in many sectors, this is already a reality. No, the resistance focussed solely on microeconomic factors relating to specific large combustion plants. This is a short-sighted view. We must think macroeconomically and take account of the public health costs of pollution and harmful emissions. In this respect, I simply cannot understand the Council's negotiating position on this issue. However, as the directive now includes old plants, I shall vote for the compromise as well.

  Hulthén (PSE). (SV) Mr President, neither the time nor the mood feels right for starting any sort of squabble – either with the Committee Chairman or with other British Members of this Parliament – on who has most to lose from acidification or measures against acidification.

Instead, I will try to be rather more positive and thank the British Members for managing to get through this directive and for ensuring that tomorrow we shall be able to make a decision. To put it rather dramatically, this decision means that my region can come back to life and that forestry, the fishing industry and biodiversity will be given a chance to repair the damage which has occurred over decades and perhaps even a whole century.

This is an excellent example of the benefit of practical and solid European cooperation. Through this kind of cooperation, we can achieve a change in my region which we should not have been able to bring about ourselves, that is, a halt to acidification. Even if we cannot eradicate acidification completely, we can halt it and try to repair some of the damage which it has caused.

I look forward to the review which is to be carried out, as I know that such measures are insufficient. Acidification will continue, despite the decision we shall make tomorrow. I wish to thank the Members and the Commission for the work we have carried out together.

  Wallström, Commission. – Mr President, honourable Members, I am very pleased that these two important additions to Community legislation on air pollution are reaching the stage of final adoption. I join with you in congratulating and thanking both rapporteurs, Mrs Oomen-Ruijten and Mrs Myller, for their efforts, but I would also like to thank the President of Parliament's delegation, Mr Friedrich, for his role in bringing these negotiations to a successful conclusion – unfortunately he cannot be here this evening – and Mr Provan for stepping in at the last moment in what proved to be one of the finest evenings of the summer.

The proposals on national emission ceilings (NECs) and large combustion plants (LCPs) represent a major advance in Community legislation on air pollution. As you know, the NEC proposal would help to establish an ongoing programme for tackling transboundary air pollution by requiring Members States to limit the emissions which cause most damage, not only to themselves but, as Mrs Hulthén said, to their neighbours.

The first stage sets legally binding emissions ceilings which Member States will have to meet by 2010. It provides for a series of periodic reviews – in 2004, 2008 and 2012 – in order to reduce emissions ceilings more in the future: this review system has been strengthened a great deal in response to Parliament's concerns. The first reviews will try to make up the shortfall by 2010 taking into account total emissions for the Community as a whole as set out in the Commission original proposal. All reviews will look at how we can achieve our long-term goals of staying below critical environmental levels after 2010. The year 2020 will then be taken as a benchmark. In subsequent reviews, the Commission will report, in particular, on progress towards attaining our long-term goals and, with these aims in mind, will consider what further measures are necessary to achieve these goals, as the rapporteur has said, "preferably by 2020".

At the same time, with the large combustion plant proposal, new and tougher emissions standards will apply in the power generation sector, in particular for older power plants which are a major cause of acidification and ozone pollution. The Commission's analysis of the common position on large combustion plants shows that both sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from this sector will fall substantially as a result of this legislation.

The compromise on the LCP proposal will provide medium-term flexibility to take account of differing circumstances in the Member States as well as substantial environmental benefits in the long term in an enlarged Community.

Parliament has achieved a great deal in this debate and should be very proud of its contribution. The Commission is pleased with the outcome. By approving this legislation, the Commission will be under an obligation to return in 2004 to review both directives and present its proposals for further progress. We have already explained how we intend to prepare for this first review in the communication on clean air for Europe which we presented in May 2001, and work is already under way on this.

In conclusion, I invite Parliament to adopt the outcome of conciliation and to join us in moving forward. I look forward to Parliament's support for CAFE.

  President. – The joint debate is closed.

The vote will be taken tomorrow at 11.00 a.m.⁽¹⁾

(The sitting was closed at 11.30 p.m.)

(1) Agenda for next sitting : see Minutes