Verbatim report of proceedings

Monday, 12 February 2007 - Strasbourg

14. Waste - Waste recycling (debate)

  President. The next item is the joint debate on

– the report by Caroline Jackson, on behalf of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on waste (COM(2005)0667 – C6-0009/2006 – 2005/0281(COD)) (A6-0466/2006)

– the report by Johannes Blokland, on behalf of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, on a Thematic Strategy on the recycling of waste (2006/2175(INI) (A6-0438/2006).

  Stavros Dimas, Μember of the Commission. (EL) Madam President, I should like to start by thanking the European Parliament and, in particular, the rapporteurs Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland for their exceptional reports and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and Mrs Gutiérrez and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy for the opinion which it drafted at first reading.

Waste policies play a fundamental role in reducing the environmental impact of the use of natural resources. The primary aims of the thematic strategy and the draft directive are to prevent waste generation and, insofar as it cannot be prevented, to minimise the effects on the environment and public health.

Over the last thirty years, the European Union has developed important waste policies and legislation in the aim of protecting public health and the environment.

The Commission's aim in the recent review of the directive on waste is to bring the legislative framework into line with current environmental challenges. The updated policy takes account of the progress made in the field of ecological innovation and supports our state-of-the-art knowledge of the sustainable use of natural resources. The proposed package of measures is designed to:

- firstly, reduce the environmental impact of waste during its entire life cycle;

- secondly, make the prevention of waste generation a priority. This effort requires action at national, regional and local level. The Member States must apply waste generation prevention policies through mandatory national programmes. This is expected to help reverse the current trend towards increased quantities of waste. Similarly, targets at national level will help to reduce the quantities of waste at Community level;

- thirdly, promote recycling by setting standards which safeguard the quality of recyclable materials. This will foster confidence in recycled materials and increase the demand for them on the internal market. We propose that this should be done using criteria to determine when recovered waste loses its status as waste;

- fourthly, the proposed measures even aim to modernise and simplify legislation on waste. Certain definitions are clarified which in the past were a source of difficulty and contradictory interpretation. The aim of the strategy and the directive is to achieve a balance, to maintain what has proven to work over the last 30 years and, at the same time, to modernise the legislative framework for coming decades.

To close, I should like to make two important comments on the framework directive on waste:

- firstly, the text which emerges from the codecision procedure needs to be clear and to provide security of law. Some of the amendments tabled do not safeguard this legal clarity, especially those concerning the distinction between recovery and disposal;

- secondly, if the legislative act in question is to be environmentally effective, it must retain its character as a framework directive. In other words, it must be a stable and clear legal framework which, at the same time, will provide adequate flexibility, so that it can adapt to changing needs.

  Caroline Jackson (PPE-DE), rapporteur. – Madam President, it is nice to see you in the Chair! This directive is a very important successor to the first framework directive and it dates me because I can remember the 1975 waste framework directive going through Parliament. People were rather surprised to find Europe dealing with waste at all at that time.

Given the likely longevity of such a measure, it is important that we get it right. We do not want a repeat, as the Commissioner has said, of what happened recently where recourse to the European Court of Justice for clarification has sometimes produced judgments that are confusing, contradictory and just plain bizarre. Legislators, not judges, should make laws.

First of all this is a directive which is very important in defining terms. The Commission has produced a number of definitions, which we have amended and added to. Many of these changes were the subject of general agreement in the committee in compromise amendments. I make no apology for believing that this plenary stage offers us the chance to fine tune these suggestions, as I and others have done. For example, in the committee we failed to find a definition of by-products, which is a vital issue. I think Parliament should have a proposal to vote on and so I have submitted an amendment for a new Article 3a defining by-products. The same sort of gap affects the issue of bio-waste.

Secondly, we have spent much time defining the waste hierarchy. This is often referred to, but until now has not been defined in any EU legal text. The committee preferred the five-stage waste hierarchy to the Commission’s rather muddled, flatter version. The problem is how to establish that the hierarchy should not be used as a rigid requirement, but should be seen as a flexible but general principle. The committee opted for life-cycle assessment and cost-benefit analyses as the essential background to any departure from the hierarchy. I believe that to be too bureaucratic, and a PPE-DE amendment proposes a more realistic, but still demanding, alternative.

Thirdly, we grappled with the issue of how one defines when waste ceases to be a waste. This gave us the opportunity to indicate through this directive which items should be given priority by the Commission, if necessary by drawing up specifications to define when they cease to be waste. We proposed seven items, but did not support a proposal that solid recovered fuel should be on the list. In the view of the committee that remains waste.

Finally, there is the question of the energy efficiency criteria, which, if met by a particular energy from a waste plant, would allow that plant to be categorised as a recovery and not a disposal operation. This seems to me an eminently sensible idea. Such a designation has environmental and commercial advantages. The criteria for designation as a recovery operation need to be high enough to be something of a gold standard, which, if adopted, would mean that anyone thinking of buying or building a new incinerator would have to meet it.

The committee adopted an amendment accepting the principle that energy from waste could qualify as recovery, but they moved the definition from the annex into Article 19. Such a move creates problems. It would mean that compliance with the formula became a permanent requirement, possibly leading to the immediate compulsory closure of all non-compliant plants, which would be an absurd development. In the light of this, the PPE-DE Group and other groups have tabled amendments to put the formula back where it belongs, in the annex.

Although this is a directive that mainly defines terms, we felt it should address the issue of waste prevention. It is no good the EU being a world leader in waste terminology if it continues to be a world leader in waste generation. I am therefore proud that, at my suggestion, Parliament’s amendments contain for the first time a proposal for an EU commitment to stabilise overall waste production by 2012 at the levels which it reached in 2008. Given that the volume of waste the EU produces is increasing every year, this is an important first step and I do hope that the Commission and Member States will support it.

I have two comments on amendments from colleagues. I note that some colleagues want EU-wide recycling targets. I think this is a mistake. Recycling is an important practice that each country has to tackle in its own way within the overall imperative of the landfill directive and its reduction targets. Apart from anything else we need to establish the carbon efficiency of recycling before we promote it as the best answer to our waste problems. I note that some Members want to restrict what can be landfilled on the basis that this is what works in their own country and that this allows them to have good recycling and low landfill figures. Well, they need to talk to their eastern European neighbours. They complain now that they are receiving huge amounts of German waste. Whatever else it means, recycling does not mean throwing your waste over the national boundary fence and hoping for the best.

I hope that we can soon make progress on this directive with the Council, but the recent history of waste directives teaches us that it is better to get it right than to rush to early adoption.

  Johannes Blokland (IND/DEM), rapporteur. – (NL) Madam President, it is with gratitude that I take on the task of enlarging on the waste strategy report, which met with unanimous support in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. Before I do so, though, I should like to thank my fellow Members for their good cooperation and the unanimous support that I just mentioned. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that waste is not a controversial issue in this House. The objective of the resolution adopted by the Committee on the Environment is to give clear direction to future waste policy, the core goal of which is to protect the environment and public health. The Committee on the Environment is largely agreed on the guiding principles in this respect, namely the precautionary principle, the 'polluter pays' principle, self-sufficiency, proximity and producer responsibility.

Unfortunately, I have to say, however, that these principles were generally ignored when the report was fleshed out further. Allow me to demonstrate this with an example. There is broad agreement on the five-steps of waste hierarchy which comprises prevention, re-use, recycling, recovery and, as a last resort, removal. This waste hierarchy is included in both Mrs Jackson’s report and my own. However, amendments have been tabled that mean that the waste hierarchy has become so flexible that one could completely circumvent it. I would argue in favour of holding firm to the provision in paragraph 16 of the resolution, namely that the waste hierarchy can only be deviated from if a certified life cycle analysis clearly demonstrates that this protects the environment more effectively.

Another issue is that of changing the definitions. The main reason for changing a definition is to change its wording for the better or to do the environment a favour. Changing definitions is not meant to make it easier to achieve objectives, to improve one’s image or to be able to corner the market. I should like to quote two important examples of this, namely by-products and the difference between recovery and removal.

Turning to by-products first, according to paragraph 10 of the resolution, we have to be very careful about declassifying waste. If something is no longer waste, it no longer falls within the environmentally-protecting waste legislation, in which case waste can be transported anywhere. Creating a new category of so-called by-products constitutes an additional risk. It is not clear under which regime this falls and the use, or misuse, of this category is set to rise astronomically.

Secondly, with regard to removal versus recovery, the discussion about the difference between recovery and removal has been going on for years. The discussion mainly revolves around the question as to when incineration of mainly household waste can be considered recovery. The intention has always been to arrive at a clear distinction. The opinion of the Committee on the Environment is included in paragraphs 12 to 14 of the resolution. Waste intended for energy recovery or incineration must in any event meet the emission standards of the Waste Incineration Directive. The Committee on the Environment also takes the view that the same environmental standards must apply to waste incineration and waste co-incineration, in other words, equal emission standards and equal criteria for energy efficiency. In addition, I have reached the conclusion that it is always better to consider waste incineration as removal. The objective of waste incineration is always removal. This achieves the necessary clarity and is in keeping with judgments of the European Court of Justice. The final point, as formulated in paragraph 31 of the resolution, is a ban on dumping waste that can be incinerated and waste that can be re-used and recycled.

Finally, I should like to call on the Commission to take paragraph 30 of the resolution seriously. This is about the long awaited proposals for directives on organic waste, building and demolition waste and sludge waste. This has been in the Sixth Environmental Action Programme since 2002, and it is high time the Commission launched these proposals so that we can create a well regulated recycling society.

  Cristina Gutiérrez-Cortines (PPE-DE), draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. – (ES) Madam President, I would like to thank Mrs Jackson not just on her good work, as it is our convention to say here, but because, on such a complex and complicated issue, I believe that she has done two things that are ideal for a good parliamentarian.

On the one hand, she has listened to everybody and to all of the countries, she has listened to industry, but she has also listened to those most directly affected, and, on the other, she has tried to take a flexible and open approach, so that the Directive on waste should not become a problem but rather that it should resolve the existing problems.

The previous legislation has to a large extent resolved problems, but it has also created problems that have led the Court of Justice to issue more judgments in the field of waste that in any other area. It has also created a huge problem for municipalities, which, at the end of the day, have to apply the rules, which are small, which vary hugely throughout Europe and which number many hundreds of thousands.

I therefore applaud your flexibility and support you fully. I also support and welcome Amendment 112, on biodegradable waste, because we are trying to create a society in which we try to minimise the use of resources and, at the same time, take the greatest possible advantage of what we are using through recycling and recovery.

Compost, that is, what in Spanish we call ‘abono’, from waste, is one of the Earth’s most ancient forms of recycling. It is also one of the forms of waste that is essential because it is the only 'ecological' way to fertilise the soil, to enrich a soil that is poor in organic material.

I am the rapporteur for the Directive on waste and I am in favour of this amendment in particular, because, until there is a specific directive, and there must be one, for biodegradable waste, until a Directive on compost is created, which for the moment is not in prospect nor part of the European Commission’s strategy — which has left it to one side in this policy of less legislation — this issue must be given a framework with a view to creating more discipline in the purification of waste and also so that farmers can use this resource with full confidence.

Thank you very much and I believe that flexibility is something that we can only afford where there is viability.

  Frieda Brepoels, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. – (NL) Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too should like to thank both rapporteurs for cooperating with so much honesty. I think that the interest so many people and organisations have shown during this first reading in terms of both the strategy and review of the directive demonstrates that waste offers many opportunities. Although waste is increasingly seen as a valuable source of raw material, it also remains a problem. As we heard today, the total amount is on the increase; too little waste is being reused or recycled; existing legislation is often implemented ineffectively and there are also major discrepancies in how the waste problem is addressed in the different Member States. As I see it, there is no doubt that whilst this review contains positive steps towards reducing the harmful effects of waste processing on the environment and health – such as, for example, the five-steps hierarchy, waste prevention programmes for the Member States, a better definition of a number of concepts, criteria to distinguish products from waste, the introduction of the proximity principle, the ban on mixing waste with a view to diluting it and obviously a procedure to clarify when waste stops being waste – many bottle necks remain. Commissioner, Amendment 85, for example, springs to mind which states that landfills where gas is extracted may be considered recovery. This is, as I see it, diametrically opposed to the policy to phase out the dumping of biodegradable waste. I also take the view that Amendments 81 and 82 should not provide for scrapping, precisely because Amendment 39 refers to the ban on incineration at sea. In addition, Amendment 26, where reference is made to the definition of ‘recovery of energy’ should be deleted, in my view, since otherwise, many incineration installations would fall within the scope of recovery, and a free market would be created for waste incineration. This would be completely at odds with the proximity principle, which is, in turn, also very important if we want to achieve a high recycling level. Finally, I do not think there is a place for the introduction of energy efficiency criteria here. This should, instead, be seen in conjunction with a review of the Waste Incineration Directive. A thorough impact study has not been done either.

Finally, we must also certainly ensure that some provisions do not result in achievements attained in some Member States being pared down or that the present policy efforts are being cancelled out. Flanders, the region from which I come, is a European trailblazer in reuse and recycling, and would be affected by this. These high figures are possible only if the local authorities are involved, and also if a number of flanking measures, such as levies and dumping bans, are taken. The Flemish earth-moving regulation, for example, is also liable to suffer by keeping out unpolluted excavated soil from the directive. Different Member States will, in any case, end up with different interpretations where cross-border transports are concerned. I would like to hear what the Commissioner has to say in this respect.

  Guido Sacconi, on behalf of the PSE Group. – (IT) Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I too should like to give Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland my most sincere thanks for the work they have done. They led us by the hand, so to speak, to reach a consensus supported by a huge majority in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and to achieve a result that was by no means a foregone conclusion at the outset: improving the consistency of two documents, one on the recycling strategy and the other on the proposed review of the waste framework directive, which are now more consistent than the Commission's original documents.

In particular, I very much appreciated the way in which Mrs Jackson conducted the discussions with us shadow rapporteurs, which allowed us to resolve almost all the problems consensually. That is why I felt rather surprised and also a little hurt, Mrs Jackson, when I saw you had tabled some amendments on behalf of your group that called these agreements into question on one particular point. That places us in a difficult or, I might say, embarrassing position.

Let us look at the priorities. First of all, a highly positive point is that we prioritised the prevention of waste generation much more than the Commission had done: we defined it better and laid down a target for stabilising it by 2012, together with a whole raft of practical monitoring measures. Secondly, there is a point that I am going to fight for to the bitter end, Mrs Jackson. We defined and specifically laid down a five-step hierarchy. Just as in a hierarchy, first you do one thing and only then the second, third and so on, namely prevention, re-use, recycling, recovery and lastly disposal. We did not rule out the possibility of departing from this hierarchy, but we tied the possibility to strict evaluation criteria, starting with cost/benefit analysis throughout the life cycle of consumer goods. I am therefore somewhat astounded that you are now calling this solution bureaucratic.

Thirdly, there is a problem that we did not resolve through our compromises and that we must now resolve by putting it to the vote in this Chamber, even though the Committee on the Environment did find what I believe is a good solution: we cannot undermine the hierarchy by regarding energy recovery as recovery, since it is actually disposal. By doing so we would straight away undermine the hierarchy and risk creating undue competition with renewable energies. Let me be quite clear: this is not an ideological rejection of incineration and energy recovery, but I too very much agree with Mrs Brepoels that reaching a definition on this subject should be left to a more appropriate forum.

Is a review of the incineration directive planned? Well, I think that would be the best place to define the issue of energy recovery, and in that respect I have therefore tabled Amendment 136, which I regard as highly reasonable. We should not fill this directive with too many problems, so let us examine the issue more calmly and with some in-depth technical input.

Lastly, I too should like to make a stand on the subject of bio-waste. The subject of composting has been put off for too long, but it is a strategic element in a recycling society and I do not see why we should not at last provide an opportunity for this option, on which there has been agreement for some time.

  Mojca Drčar Murko, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – (SL) The Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe welcomes the Commission’s basic principle in reviewing the framework directive regarding waste as a potential resource. We are aiming for a balanced approach that takes account both of the consequences of the increase in waste generation, that is to say its risk factors in relation to the environment and human health, and of the demands for the growing market in new waste management technologies.

With regard to the waste hierarchy, we support, in principle, the separate collection of waste and recycling in all locations where it is financially and environmentally efficient. However, we also support the efficient management of other types of waste that cannot be recovered or recycled.

We have found that those Member States which are most successful in reducing their dependency on waste landfills have achieved this objective through a combination of recycling, biological waste treatment – that is to say composting – and energy recovery, with the proviso that specialised plants must comply with demanding criteria as regards emissions of gaseous pollutants. If they meet these criteria, they should be given the opportunity to be recognised as energy recovery plants instead of ending up at the bottom of the waste management hierarchy, at the same level as landfills.

The opportunity of achieving R1 status would motivate these plants to become energy efficient, something that is also in accordance with the European plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent. Our proposal for Amendment 133 provides for a compromise solution which complements the Commission’s initial formula with the conclusions of the discussion in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

We link the hierarchy to the product life-cycle criteria. If we were to introduce that line of thinking, it would contribute to the sustainability of resources and raw materials. This is an approach that is not only aware of the harmful effects and risks to the environment caused by waste, but also the potential preservation of natural resources. However, life-cycle assessments should be coupled with a cost-benefit analysis that will guide operators when choosing appropriate courses of action.

Finally, let me say that much progress has been achieved in waste management in recent years, in the past decades we might say. The technology is improving and the costs are gradually falling, so there is no sense in dismantling procedures that have been tried and tested. This has led our group to prepare draft amendments on the definition of recycling and on the two directives on waste oils and hazardous waste that will no longer be in force. I can say that we also fully support the ideas expressed today by Commissioner Dimas on the need for legal clarity, because that too is one of our objectives.

The European Court of Justice is indeed a very important institution; however our objective must be to take charge of the legislative work and allow the Court to rule only in borderline cases that arise in this area.

I, too, would like to congratulate both rapporteurs, Mrs Jackson and Mr Blockland for their sound work and cooperation.

  Liam Aylward, on behalf of the UEN Group. – Madam President, I very much welcome the Commission's strategy and revised framework waste directive.

We complain all the time of the lack of engagement between the European Union and its citizens. Through this legislative proposal the EU is demonstrating its leadership and assistance to Member States, addressing the snowballing problem of waste and its environmental and health impact, while further jump-starting a sector that is already providing upwards of two million jobs.

As our economies modernise in our respective countries across the Union, we are simultaneously producing 1.3 billion tonnes of waste annually, some 40 million tonnes of which is hazardous. Decoupling waste generation from economic growth is vital, otherwise, according to the OECD, we face, at our current rate, the generation of 45% more waste than in 1995. Prevention is key, and to succeed in this we need to involve all stakeholders, producers and consumers.

Member States will now be obliged to provide waste-management and waste-prevention plans, focusing policymakers at EU, national and local level on prevention, thereby triggering an increase in waste-prevention policies.

I welcome the amendments of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety calling for binding targets to stabilise waste production at anticipated 2008 levels by 2012 and calling for greater reuse and recycling to reduce pressure on landfill sites.

We need to engage with the citizens – producers and consumers are equally important. We need to make citizens aware of their current and possible future impact in the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste. Community and local authority recycling facilities need to be practically located and accessible for maximum impact. Our citizens are becoming more conscious of the environment and it is up to us, the politicians, to lead them. The success of the plastic-bag levy in Ireland is an obvious example. Now we need to work together to make prevention a success.

  Jill Evans, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, I would also like to thank the rapporteurs Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland for all their work on this, because the Verts/ALE Group was very disappointed in the Commission’s proposal. Instead of moving ahead to focus on prevention, reuse and recycling, it was in fact a step backwards: a worrying combination of no action or targets on preventing, reusing and recycling, plenty of legal loopholes for unscrupulous operators and the promotion of incineration, sending out completely the wrong message.

We had very good cooperation between the shadow rapporteurs leading up to the committee vote and we agreed on many compromise amendments and although it did not go as far as we wanted, it moved the proposal ahead to such an extent that the Verts/ALE Group withdrew our amendment rejecting the Commission proposal outright. Our group could vote for the report tomorrow if this Parliament upholds the position of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety but I fear that will not be the case.

The basis of the whole waste strategy must be the binding five-step waste hierarchy of prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery and disposal. It is essential to have national prevention programmes with Europe-wide measures and targets. Prevention has been talked about an awful lot since the first directive back in 1975 but we have seen very little action and we have heard many excuses for not doing it. That is why we welcome the target of stabilisation of waste by 2012. It is not as far as we would like to go; it is weaker than our original proposal; but we will accept that to ensure that prevention programmes with binding targets do come forward.

We also support EU-wide recycling targets. A 50% recycling level for municipal waste and 70% for construction, demolition, industrial and manufacturing waste by 2020 is perfectly achievable and realistic. And as everything cannot and should not be included in this one framework directive, we also want the Commission to bring forward proposals on specific waste streams before the end of 2008, and, in the case of biodegradable waste, by the end of 2007.

But the key issue for us in this directive is incineration. Reclassifying waste incineration as energy recovery would completely undermine measures on preventing and recycling. Yes, we have to move away from landfill, that is a legal obligation already. But incineration is not the answer. It is blatantly contradictory to endorse a five-step hierarchy and then upgrade and give incentives to the lowest level of that hierarchy. A recent report showed that incineration is not green energy or safe waste disposal. We should not participate in the ‘greenwashing’ of incineration.

  Bairbre de Brún, thar ceann Ghrúpa GUE/NGL. – A Uachtaráin, caithfidh mé m'iontas agus mo dhíomá a chur in iúl faoin dóigh ar chuir an rapóirtéir Bean Jackson a oiread sin leasuithe ar bord a athraíonn agus a thagann salach ar na leasuithe comhréiteacha a ndearna sí féin idirbheartaíocht orthu linn uilig mar scáth-thuairisceoir agus scáthrapóirtéir. Bhain comhthoil mhór le gach leasú comhréitigh ag an vóta ar an Choiste um Chomhshaol, um Shláinte Phoiblí agus um Shábháilteacht Bia. Le vóta deiridh an Choiste ar théacs thuarascáil Bhean Jackson, bhí 48 i bhfabhar, 6 in éadan agus dhá staonadh. Tá sé doiligh le tuiscint mar sin, conas is féidir le Bean Jackson a oiread sin leasuithe a chur ar bord don seisiún iomlánach, rud a bhriseann an chomhthoil seo. Tá sé doiligh le tuiscint cad é an cineál údaráis atá sí ag iarraidh dá hobair leis na hinstitiúidí eile sna seachtainí atá romhainn.

Chuir mo ghrúpa GUE/NGL leasuithe chun tosaigh maidir le hathchúrsáil ar 50% ar a laghad de dhramháil in-bhith-dhíghrádaithe, úsáid a bhaint as an dlíeolaíocht atá ann anois chun dul i ngleic le hiarrachtaí an Choimisiúin loisceoirí cathrach a athbhrandáil mar athghabháil, ag cinntiú nach dtéann ábhar in-athúsáidte nó in-athchúrsáilte i líonadh talún nó isteach i loisceoir, athchúrsáil agus córas bailiúcháin scartha a chur chun cinn agus comhfhiosrú a dhéanamh ar an mhéid dramhaíola a dhéantar sa chéad dul síos. Ba mhaith linne béim a fheiceáil go príomha ar chosc dramhaíola agus ansin ar athúsáid agus athchúrsáil. Tá sé tábhachtach nach féidir loisceoirí cathrach a athbhrandáil mar athghabháil. Chun sin a stopadh, iarraim ar fheisirí vótáil go háirithe ar son leasuithe 83, 156, 166 agus 179.

Gan spriocanna, ar leibhéal an Aontais Eorpaigh d'athchúrsáil, tá an chontúirt ann go mbeidh brú ar Bhallstáit gabháil chuig loscadh amháin agus neamhaird a dhéanamh de chliarlathas an chúig chéim is fearr. Tá contúirt ann go háirithe go mbeadh drochthaifead athchúrsála ag Ballstáit a bheidh ag iarraidh an riachtanas don treoir líonta talún a chomhlíonadh. Ní leor an cliarlathas dramhaíola amháin chun cosc a chur air seo. Iarraim ar fheisirí vótáil ar son spriocanna éifeachtacha athchúrsála fosta. Mar fhocal scoir, ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh Thuarascáil Blokland maidir le Straitéis Théamach ar Athchúrsáil Dramhaíola agus buíochas a ghabháil leis an rapóirtéir as a chuid oibre.

  Kathy Sinnott, on behalf of the IND/DEM Group. – Madam President, whatever the Irish Government may say, Irish people do not want to incinerate their rubbish. We are willing to reduce, reuse and recycle. In the past, Ireland has been reliant on landfill as its only option. This is changing, but even now provisions for recycling are patchy and poor in most areas.

With the exception of small in-house units, we have no incinerators in Ireland and consequently, our levels of dioxins are among the lowest in Europe. But now major incinerator companies circle Ireland like vultures. It will not help if we legitimise incineration by changing our definition of recovery. If we do not remain clear that incineration is disposal of the worst kind and is unsustainable, my country, Ireland, will take the easy way out, resulting in long-term harm. I therefore reject any of the amendments that want to change definitions and I want to congratulate Mr Blokland on taking a very positive and strong strategy on recycling.

  Irena Belohorská (NI). – (SK) I too would naturally like to start by thanking both rapporteurs for their very important legislative document that aims to simplify the current legal framework covering the area of waste management. At the same time, it should be noted that the most frequently disputed topic at the European Court of Justice is environmental legislation, a substantial portion of which concerns waste management.

On the one hand, I support the rapporteur in her efforts to prevent extensive comitology. On the other hand, the framework directive is so important for the Union that for all of the articles referred to, namely Articles 5, 11 and 21, it is necessary to insist on the codecision procedure. It would be desirable to re-classify waste incineration as a form of recycling, rather than a form of disposal, which is how it is categorised at present. Recycling also reduces our dependence on primary raw materials.

It is necessary to improve border controls so that some Member States do not become landfills for others. We are very well aware that for many people waste management offers the lure of very lucrative but illegal business opportunities. However, I have a reservation concerning Amendment 70, which modifies Article 30 of the directive, aiming to remove specific qualitative and, especially, quantitative indicators from the waste management programmes of Member States.

If we really want to lower the volume of waste, quantitative indicators are essential. A decrease in volume does not automatically mean that the most hazardous waste will be eliminated. Excessive flexibility within the programmes, or inaccurate and vaguely defined objectives, will not result in the desired outcome, and will certainly be abused by Member States. This is certain to happen since the directive leaves it up to the Member States to achieve results. Waste management programmes must also include quantitative indicators; otherwise the programmes will not be ambitious enough. At the same time, I agree with the rapporteur that the Member States should have their programmes in place within 18 months of the directive coming into effect. It seems to me that three years, as suggested by the Commission, is too long.

  Avril Doyle (PPE-DE). – Madam President, I agree with Mrs Jackson that her five-step waste hierarchy sends out clear signals to Member States on waste prevention and management legislation, and that she has allowed enough wriggle room so that the environment will always be the winner in waste policy and that Member States take full account of the principles of the precautionary approach and sustainability, together with other criteria covering the ecological, economic and social impacts, when applying the five-step waste hierarchy in a carbon-efficient way.

I believe that recovery needs to be unambiguously defined, although there may still be further fine tuning needed after we vote tomorrow, and that the energy efficiency criteria (which should be in the annex) to determine whether municipal waste incinerators should be classified as recovery or disposal operations are a realistic and logical contribution to Europe’s waste and energy challenges.

I agree that it is of critical importance for the environment and for human health that municipal waste incinerators conform to gold standards and use best available technology. The debate is ongoing as to whether the efficiency criteria should be included or not, and at what levels they should be set. Waste is a resource and an energy source, and we must not exclude ways to use it as such after the five-step hierarchy.

The wording of the Commission text and that of the latest PPE-DE Group amendment referred to energy efficiency criteria as being ‘equal to or above’ the stated levels. This amendment will ensure that we will not prejudice further legislation or future legislation, such as a potential waste incineration directive, making criteria even stricter if needs be. I should like to thank Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland.

  Anne Ferreira (PSE). – (FR) Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, faced with the continual increase in waste that we are producing and with the need to revise the 1975 text, the European Commission proposed, last year, to amend the framework directive in force. The intention was good, but the legislative proposal is unequal to the challenges and is well below the objectives that must be attained.

The measures proposed in relation to the prevention of waste and, thus, to the reduction of the volumes produced are not very practical, and none are binding. Equally, I regret the absence of quantified targets for recycling.

Moreover, the Commission proposals on hazardous waste are inadequate when compared with the Community legislation in force. The objective of merging the texts in order to simplify them and to improve their implementation must not mean the provisions on the treatment of hazardous waste being toned down. When it comes to waste, no toning down can be tolerated, and even less so when the waste is hazardous. Recent events encourage us to be vigilant.

When hazardous waste is mixed with other waste, it does not become any less dangerous. Equally, we cannot support the possibility of derogations from the obligation to hold an operating permit when having to deal with hazardous waste.

As regards the concept of using waste as an energy source, I understand the aim, but it is dangerous to confuse energy exploitation with energy recovery. There is nothing stopping us from recovering energy generated during incineration operations even if incineration is classed as a disposal operation. This is a point requiring clarification. A proposal such as this, which enables incineration to be classed as a recovery operation and no longer just as a disposal operation, puts waste recovery and energy recovery on the same footing. Above all, though, it contradicts the five-step hierarchy adopted by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and, by extension, the objective of preventing and reducing the production of waste. This objective is backed by Mrs Jackson’s report, which significantly enhances the Commission proposal.

The waste issue is a considerable challenge for society, one that warrants ambitious legislation. An increasing number of surveys show us that a large majority of consumers want more environmentally-friendly products, and want to be better informed of the nature and quality of those products. We must listen to them.

  Holger Krahmer (ALDE). – (DE) Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I, too, would like to thank both the rapporteurs, and particularly Mrs Jackson, who, in seeking compromises in an extremely complex regulatory framework, is evidently getting on top of a mammoth task. I have to say, though, that the impression I got from the way the first reading went was that this House is engaged in doing the opposite of what we originally sought to achieve by revising this legislation, that is to say, simplifying European law on waste and making it less bureaucratic. What is needed in the application of the hierarchy of waste is flexibility, a flexibility that is necessary if economically and ecologically reasonable flows of waste are to be made a practical possibility. What I would say to Mr Sacconi, who is unfortunately currently leaving the Chambers, is that life-cycle analyses are a bureaucratic business, and, rather than in practice ensuring the flexible management of the hierarchy, will have precisely the opposite effect. Contrary to our aim of avoiding waste, they produce superfluous paper.

I am aware that people have very considerable reservations about a flexible hierarchy of waste, but taking a look at the practice of modern waste management will help to reduce them; new technical processes have brought new solutions with them, and we should not use the revision of a law to make tried and tested practices illegal; there is no longer any reason not to treat recycling and the use of waste as an energy source as being of equivalent value. If you really want resources to be better used and lifecycles to be managed, you have to abandon your ideological blinkers.

Let me just add something about autarky. There is, in principle, no place in environmental legislation for market regulations, which are, both ecologically and environmentally, counterproductive in their effects. It is regrettable that it is in the field of environmental legislation that we avail ourselves of the internal market or dispense with it as we please. This is not about the prevention of waste tourism but about seeking, through Europe-wide competition, those solutions that work best both environmentally and economically. It is a lamentable and obvious fact that, in the current debate about the autarky principle, national and regional interests take precedence over everything else.

  Wiesław Stefan Kuc (UEN). – (PL) Madam President, the definition of waste is very wide-ranging. However, it does appear that we should clearly define ‘waste’ as the residues from manufacturing processes that cannot be re-used as raw materials or as input in other manufacturing processes at the present stage of technological development. Although a great deal of waste can be re-used in this way, there is unfortunately a large proportion that cannot. This includes the bulk of the waste from chemical processes, two examples of which I would like to draw to your attention.

The first are chlorides, which are produced in the manufacture of phosphor-based fertiliser. There are whole mountains of chlorides, which the wind disperses and which cause acid rain in places such as Scandinavia. There are at least two such manufacturing sites in Poland, near Szczecin and near Gdańsk. And how many are there in the entire European Union, in Ukraine, in Russia?

The second are ‘hot spots’, of which there are a number in the European Union, including one in Jaworznia near Krakow. More than 150 000 tonnes of waste are created by a nearby factory, which manufactures plant protection agents. At one time it also manufactured cyclon B. The chemical compounds are washed away by water, and the effluent has poisoned the nearby river and the ground to depths of tens of metres. We do not know how to dispose of this and other waste, or what to do with it.

I ask the Environmental Protection Agency and research institutes to become more involved in developing methods of eliminating chemical waste.

  Marie Anne Isler Béguin (Verts/ALE). – (FR) Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, every day, we produce household, industrial and mining waste, which is very difficult to destroy. Waste management is complex and raises the question – implicitly, of course – of our ability to respect not only the environment and people’s health, but also our own European policies.

Since 1976, we have been developing fairly ineffective common legislation. This second directive, which is a revision of the ‘Waste’ Directive, cannot hide behind the existing provisions, which have just been made simpler. The figures speak for themselves. Volumes of waste continue to increase: 3.5 tonnes are produced per inhabitant per year, which equates to an increase of 460 kg in ten years.

Over and above legislation that can be converted into future provisions, it is important to give Europeans an overall view of the route travelled by our bins. The European hierarchy, founded on five key principles – prevention, sorting, recycling, incineration and disposal – must not be undermined by efforts to promote incineration. Like many citizens living near incineration plants, I am concerned that the Union is not showing itself to be more proactive in terms of waste prevention and recycling, by putting in place genuine sectors for recycling, for example. We must drastically reduce our use of incineration and prevent it from being granted the status of an energy recovery process.

On the contrary, it is important to develop recycling, so that we attain a rate of 50% of waste managed by local authorities and of 60% of other waste being recycled by 2020, with a gradual reduction in the burying and incineration of all materials that can be re-used, recycled or composted.

I would also draw your attention, Madam President, to the inclusion of the ‘Hazardous waste’ Directive in the new legislation. Hazardous waste must be strictly controlled; it must come under a traceability system and an extremely restrictive authorisation system. We agree on the need to prevent and reduce the impact of waste, Commissioner, but succumbing to the easy option of incineration would be unacceptable.

  Dimitrios Papadimoulis (GUE/NGL). – (EL) Madam President, we need the review of the policy to strengthen our targets for less waste and more recycling.

The five-step hierarchy may not be the best solution, but is a step forward. That is why it would be a mistake to undermine the progress and agreement that we have achieved in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety with amendments that disrupt this hierarchy and promote incineration as the best solution, despite the fact that this method puts a considerable burden on the environment.

The Commission's legislative framework is inadequate: we need more ambitious targets on recycling, we need additional incentives for national and local authorities to develop the necessary infrastructures so that we do not end up promoting incineration by default and we need a stricter policy on dangerous waste. Above all, however, we need measures to support prevention.

Awakening the awareness of citizens to recycling is not enough. We need to support the development of new policy measures to gradually reduce waste and support research into products which are easier to recover, recycle and use for other purposes.

  Urszula Krupa (IND/DEM). – (PL) Madam President, the consumer lifestyle of Europeans has created increasing quantities of waste, and for this reason proposals for recycling are an important preventative element. However, implementing the complex legislation about various waste streams and various methods of recycling contained in the directive will be a difficult task, especially for local councils and small enterprises. Huge amounts of reporting will not solve the problem either. The poorer local councils in the new Member States, which lack experience in separating waste and lack funding, may not manage, and the blanket fines imposed on Member States for non-fulfilment of the provisions of the directive will further impoverish local governments and small and medium-sized enterprises, which will ultimately mean there being even less money for implementing environmental targets.

  Karl-Heinz Florenz (PPE-DE). – (DE) Madam President, Commissioner, Mrs Jackson, Mr Blokland, many thanks for your good work; I believe that the Commission has produced a good report, the intention of which is to make clear the need for our policy on waste to be, in future, a policy about resources, for if we do not look at it from that angle, the day will come when our children will ask us the most uncomfortable questions about what we have done with this century’s resources. That is why the Commission is right to concentrate very strongly on the definition of vague legal concepts in the old directive and laid down once and for all a clear definition of what is meant by the disposal of waste. I am glad that a commitment has been made to achieve high levels of energy efficiency when waste has been extracted for use as a source of energy, for what we demand of cars, fridges and many other things we ought also to demand of incineration plants. This certainly is an example of the principle of ‘better regulation’.

I see the hierarchy as agreed on by the committee as a good move; perhaps I might point out to our good friends in the Greens that it is a five-step scale – not one to be set in concrete, though, but one that also allows mutual flexibility, for even paper must, when it has been recycled seven or eight times, at some point end up in a proper reprocessing or incineration facility.

I find this talk of autarky very worrying indeed; using autarky as a means of protecting municipal undertakings in Europe is in vogue, yet we need both the small and medium-sized business sector and municipal undertakings as competitors in the same market, and it is good when we manage that. I am much obliged to you, Commissioner, for having given us an undertaking that you would be energetic in taking action against illegal exports outside the European Union, and that is something that will have to be followed up.

Let me say, by way of conclusion – and this I say to Mrs Jackson – that I regret our inability to find a common denominator where the issue of ending the ban on landfill is concerned; it would be best if landfill could be pretty much closed down, for then the recycling really would flow.

  Edite Estrela (PSE). – (PT) Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too should like to begin by congratulating the rapporteurs Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland on their excellent work.

49% of urban waste in the EU is deposited in landfill sites. 18% is incinerated and only 33% is taken for recycling or composting. The European Environment Agency predicts that there will be around 40% more paper, glass and plastic waste by 2020. Against this backdrop, the revised Waste Framework Directive should help reduce the environmental and socio-economic impact of waste management, by taking account of the whole lifecycle of products and materials and by attaching priority to protecting human health.

The reduction, prevention, reuse and recycling of waste should be priority issues. The Commission must take the lead in drawing up an action plan for waste prevention that could act as a source of information for the Member States as they draw up their prevention programmes. The Member States should take measures to stabilise waste production by 2012. For this to happen, manufacturers and importers must take on greater responsibility for the waste generated when their products are placed on the market, pursuant to the polluter pays principle.

The thematic strategy refers to the need to clarify concepts. To this end, I have tabled two amendments, in which I have sought to clarify the definitions of recovery and elimination of waste, which I trust will be adopted by Parliament. As regards dangerous waste, Parliament recently adopted REACH. It is now up to the Member States to adopt the measures needed for the collection, production and transport of dangerous waste, and for ensuring that the waste is stored and processed in the best possible conditions in terms of safety, environmental protection and public health protection.

  Marios Matsakis (ALDE). – Madam President, Commissioner, my congratulations to Mrs Jackson on an excellent, though in some aspects controversial, report, and also to Mr Florenz and Mr Blokland. Waste, as we all know, is a major problem of modern day living, and it is greatly worsened by the exaggerated consumerism-based global society we live in. Hence, the most important task is not to find out how best to cope with the waste we generate, but to try to reduce the waste we produce in the first place. However, things being as they are, we have to deal with an effective waste framework directive.

Time constraints preclude extensive individual debate. I shall just mention two points. The first is the much-discussed Article 3, and I will say straightaway that I tend to favour the amendment by Mrs Jackson and Mr Florenz regarding the recycling definition, not because I approve of incineration as such but because I believe it is vital to take one step at a time, and it is important to keep the existing recycling industry alive and functioning.

My second point concerns implementation and monitoring. We all know that many directives are comprehensive enough but, to a large extent, remain good only on paper. We must make sure that the application of this waste directive is effectively monitored and properly implemented in practice. Let us remember that a good piece of legislation from our Parliament, if improperly applied on the ground, is a bad piece of legislation for our citizens.

IN THE CHAIR: MR MOSCOVICI
Vice-President

  Leopold Józef Rutowicz (UEN). – (PL) Mr President, Mrs Jackson’s waste and Mr Blokland’s recycling reports are very important for us and for protecting the environment. Unfortunately, studies of waste from the re-use of biological effluent on non-industrial mountain areas have shown it to contain heavy metals. This disqualifies it from use as fertiliser and also indicates that the process of environmental contamination is ongoing. Particularly in Eastern Europe, there are sites where spent pesticides have been stored. This waste was left over from enterprises that have been put into liquidation, and the buildings and land that have been left behind are ruined.

Properly organised recycling would go some way to solving many of these problems. Unfortunately, even the best regulations will not solve them all. The effectiveness of any action taken in this respect will be hampered by ignorance of knowledge about the danger of the waste and its re-use (schools and the media should be provided with ongoing information about this), by lack of funding for waste management, particularly in poor municipalities (such municipalities should qualify for national and EU funding) and insufficient exchange of best practice in the field.

  Hiltrud Breyer (Verts/ALE). – (DE) Mr President, as we know, it is best to avoid waste, but, when it is produced, the first thing to do with it is to reuse it or recycle it; only when all the other possibilities have been exhausted should it be thrown away. My fear, though, is that we are now, where waste policy is concerned, taking a step backwards, with the intention being to encourage the burning of waste rather than a hierarchical approach to the recycling of waste. It really would be a portent of doom if we were to fail to make clear our desire to become a society that avoids and recycles waste and instead start making the burning of waste respectable and socially acceptable; it would also do a disservice to the protection of the climate, to which we know this practice would be detrimental.

It follows, then, that, when we vote, we need to administer an unmistakeable corrective; not only must the burning of waste not be reinterpreted as the generation of energy, but Europe also very definitely needs its own policy on material and product flow. I also hope that we will manage to specify clearly targets for the avoidance and recycling of waste, for it is only by these that we will be able to make it clear that we are striving to go in new directions, and towards new targets, in waste policy.

  Kartika Tamara Liotard (GUE/NGL). – (NL) Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteurs, waste is a growing problem within Europe and outside. We are at risk of slowly drowning in our own waste. It is therefore high time we cracked down on it before we literally get in it over our heads. In this respect, it is important to bear in mind that waste has now become a trading product with its own adverse effects to boot. According to physical inspections, one third of the extremely lucrative waste transports are illegal. Fresh, tough policy is therefore called for, but we do have to choose the right methods. The restriction, reuse and recycling of waste are all sustainable options, whereas investing heavily in combustion furnaces, as Mrs Jackson suggests, is going completely the wrong way, both from the point of view of the climate issue and from the point of view of retaining our natural resources. Sound waste policy must solve problems and certainly not create any new ones.

  Johannes Blokland (IND/DEM). – (NL) Mr President, when I, a moment ago, on behalf of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, presented my report on the waste strategy, I pointed out that it is important to hold firm to the guiding principles from the resolution when reviewing the framework directive on waste. What I meant was that we should not introduce a new confusing concept called by-product, and that we should not label waste incineration too easily as recovery. Needless to say, the forced and immediate closure of all kinds of combustion furnaces as a result of Amendment 57 is not what I have in mind. I do think, however, that the idea of Amendment 57, namely including criteria for energy efficiency in a licence, can be very beneficial for both the environment and the climate. I would therefore argue in favour of the idea being endorsed, so that it can be further developed and improved.

Finally, I warmly support the proposals for dumping bans, for reusable and recyclable waste, as well as the proposals for promoting the composting of organic waste.

  Jim Allister (NI). – Mr President, the Commission’s thematic strategy document is strong on identifying the problems: waste volumes continuing to grow, the potential for waste prevention and recycling not being fully used, illegal cross-border waste shipments increasing and so on. But, as ever, the answer from Brussels seems to be more legislation. Would it not be more sensible to review the existing laws and make them work before adding new layers of legislation? If legislation is being poorly implemented, if there are different approaches to solving the waste problem, if current wording causes differing interpretations, what will be usefully added by putting in new laws without first streamlining, and ensuring implementation of, the existing legislation? We hear much talk in this House and from the Commission about the simplification of regulation but, frankly, so far little of substance has happened.

Similarly, on illegal cross-border shipments of waste, it is vital that the waste source is identified and the ‘polluter pays’ principle rigorously enforced. In my constituency in Northern Ireland, we are afflicted with illegal dumping of waste from our neighbour in the Republic of Ireland. It can and must do more to stop those illegal shipments and it must pay for the damage that has been done.

Finally, the export of waste from the EU to developing countries for processing involving methods far less sustainable than those within the EU is something which I think we really need to address. On top of that, the carbon footprint of those exports makes that a practice which should be reversed.

  Françoise Grossetête (PPE-DE). – (FR) Mr President, I should like to start by warmly congratulating our colleague, Mrs Jackson, on her very good work, which reflects her great expertise on the sensitive issue of waste management.

I am fairly satisfied with the clarification that has been provided with the five-stage hierarchy. What is most important is prevention, which consists in reducing the volume of our waste and which truly requires substantial efforts, and recycling. However, not everything is recyclable. The necessary market still does not exist. Recovery is therefore necessary, for want of other solutions, but it must be matched by high energy efficiency.

This hierarchy must be a guiding principle, but one that incorporates many parameters, not least local parameters, because it is important to introduce some flexibility by varying, where appropriate, the priorities in line with practical aspects and with the necessary complementarity of management methods.

On this point, I also welcome the inclusion in the report of the producer responsibility principle, on the one hand, and of the control and traceability requirements imposed on hazardous waste, on the other hand, which also cover the provisions governing the granting of the authorisations necessary for treatment plants and the checks on the transport of waste.

Finally, with regard to the amendments concerning by-products, I am radically opposed to a definition that would exempt certain types of waste from environmental obligations; this definition would allow types of waste that are considered as by-products to be exempt from legislation on waste and not to be subject to traceability and transport authorisation requirements, or, in certain cases, to the REACH legislation that applies to goods.

We therefore have reason to fear that certain types of combustible waste from the manufacturing and chemical industries, such as, for instance, fuel substitutes, which are currently considered as hazardous waste, will easily comply with the proposed definitions for by-products, not being toned down, as they are, by other criteria. That seems particularly dangerous to me, because there is then the risk of a general declassification of all the waste streams fulfilling these criteria.

  Dorette Corbey (PSE). – (NL) Mr President, first of all, I should like to thank both rapporteurs. They have both done an excellent job in handling this complex issue.

Our waste mountain is still growing, and that is certainly a trend that needs to be bucked, because we have to move towards a world without waste, a world where all spent products and packaging materials form the raw materials for new products, where raw materials do not lose their value and where recycling is not the same as downcycling. The new framework directive is moving in the right direction. According to the waste hierarchy, we first need to prevent waste, and if any waste is created, we need to focus on reuse and recycling, in that order. At the moment, 34% of waste is being recycled, and this share must, and indeed can, be increased.

There are two things that I regard as important. First of all, there is producer responsibility. They must be given more responsibility to prevent and process waste. They will need to commit to reuse and recycling. This producer responsibility must be developed further and can, for example, take the form of a duty to take back packaging.

Secondly, a world without waste is still, unfortunately, a long way off. Waste is still being created, despite recycling and prevention, and we must use it as effectively as possible. The unfortunate fact is that 50% of the European Union’s waste is still being dumped, even though dumping is invariably inefficient. This really must stop. Incineration is in any event a more efficient way of disposing of waste than dumping. Modern waste incineration installations can recover waste by extracting energy from it. The choice is therefore not between recycling or incinerating. We need to go for recycling all the way. In the next few years, though, it will be impossible to recycle 100%, and the choice will therefore be between dumping and incinerating, in which case it is better to opt for incineration combined with energy recovery. If this is done in a very effective manner, we will, in any case, be able to substantially cut down on CO2.

  Marian Harkin (ALDE). – Mr President, in the one minute allocated to me I shall make four brief points.

Firstly, I support the five-stage hierarchy of waste, but flexibility should only be on a case-by-case basis, otherwise we run the risk that this approach may mean everything and nothing at the same time.

Secondly, I agree with the rapporteur that we should only use the comitology process for technical purposes and that we should move to codecision processes in Articles 5, 11 and 21.

Thirdly, I believe that waste incineration should not be reclassified as a recovery operation but remain as a disposal operation. To do otherwise would undermine the principle of prevention, reuse and recycling. However, this should not blind us to the fact that dioxins are produced from many other sources, from barbecues to fireworks to open fires.

Finally, with regard to illegal cross-border dumping of rubbish in Ireland, lest anyone in Parliament be misled, let me say to my colleague, Mr Allister: it goes both ways. Illegal waste dumping knows no borders and it is most certainly not one-way traffic; greater vigilance is needed on both sides of the border.

  Friedrich-Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf (Verts/ALE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner Dimas, here in this House, all the groups are coming together to address a small but important problem, that being the recycling of food residues. We do, in Germany, have a system that, by sterilising at 133 degrees, is proof against diseases and BSE and makes their use as animal feed possible.

Back in 2002, when Regulation 1774 was adopted, there were five of us who voted not to accept a long-term solution to the feeding problem under these conditions, but the Commission had stipulated a four-year transitional period, and a proposal was meant to put in an appearance in due time. It failed to do so.

In the meantime, the Commission has reviewed the system. None of you have objected; the system is regarded as safe, and so we take the view that it is in line with the recycling concept of this directive, and ask the Commission to view this change in a positive light and allow us to use the process of food reprocessing in use in Germany and elsewhere where a similar system has been developed to some degree, for the benefit of animals and of the environment.

  Jacky Henin (GUE/NGL). – (FR) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome the fact that our Parliament is making bolder proposals than the Commission where the recycling of waste is concerned.

However, what can we expect from a Commission whose policy is to systematically sacrifice the general interest of Europeans for the sake of the individual interests of the shareholders of multinational companies?

Environmental dumping of waste must be combated within and outside the Union. This matter should, moreover, constitute one of the core aspects of Mr Mandelson's negotiating mandate at the WTO. What is at stake here is not only the protection of the planet, but also the fight against relocations that are due to the violation of basic environmental rules. All waste produced within the Union, including waste from ships chartered by European companies, must be treated on EU soil by industrial sectors that create jobs, with national authorities assuming responsibility for this.

Africa, India and Asia must no longer be treated as the dustbins of Europe. Local authorities have been able to anticipate, to set an example and to innovate. Proof of this is the ‘model’ methanisation plant and the multi-sector waste recovery process established by the authority to which my town belongs.

Unfortunately, these exemplary achievements within the Union owe everything to local taxpayers and little or nothing to the Union and to manufacturers. It would be helpful for this to be taken into consideration and for help to be given to those who have fewer opportunities than others.

  Thomas Wise (IND/DEM). – Mr President, here we see one of the few cases where this Parliament is asked for real legislative input as part of a codecision procedure. Mrs Jackson has duly compiled the report but, not content with that, Parliament throws in Mr Blokland’s report as well, an own-initiative report with no legislative relevance, and the subject – waste!

How much paper was wasted printing this report? However, at least it gives me the chance to point out the difference between UKIP and British Conservatives. As a UKIP MEP, I can stand up for my country even when I have to disagree with a group colleague to do so. I believe my own country is capable and responsible in matters of waste and should be free to enforce its own legislation. The British Tories are not free to criticise EU enthusiasts within their own group, the EPP – the group their leader promised to leave. That is bad enough. But, worse still, they even write the EPP’s Europhile reports for them. Witness Mrs Jackson when she says you must absolutely resist the Member States and the Commission in their efforts to keep the comitology process closed. Naturally, I am with her as far as the Commission goes, but the Member States? A British Tory talking about resolutely resisting the Member States? This is the true face of British Conservatives. Mrs Jackson’s husband famously left them for Labour. These days they are probably too Europhile even for him.

  Eija-Riitta Korhola (PPE-DE). – (FI) Mr President, in my opinion Mrs Jackson deserves praise for a difficult task. The topic of waste illustrates well how environmental friendliness can sometimes differ very greatly in theory and in practice.

It is high time we clarified, simplified and harmonised Community legislation on waste. All too often we have witnessed situations where the Court of Justice of the European Communities has ultimately defined what constitutes waste or how it should be managed. We now need clear and workable criteria and guidelines so that our laws on waste can also support the objective we agreed on at Lisbon, which at the same time would guarantee operators the sort of working environment that can be predicted.

There needs to be both qualitative and quantitative prevention of waste. We have to be able to specify what constitutes by-products and to say when waste is no longer waste for us to cut down on the use of virgin materials as much as possible. At the same time, we need to increase the scope for utilising materials considered to be waste, in order to reduce as much as possible the amount of waste that has to be destroyed.

That is why I am extremely concerned, because the report by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, hinting as it does at compromise, especially as regards quality, cannot meet the targets set. For example, the recital where it says that all by-products will basically be regarded as waste when there are no clear and case-specific criteria in the law would be a catastrophe for our Community. In practice, however vital and useful a substance or material generated as a by-product is, for example in auxiliary production or re-use, it would always be regarded as waste in order to be on the safe side, or included within the scope of waste legislation. The truth is, though, that there are huge volumes of material produced in industry whose precise composition is known, and which could be regarded as a fraction separate from the rest of the waste stream at source. This way, its exploitation would be easy, the risks would be totally under control and energy would be saved.

Similarly, a rigid waste hierarchy, which now can only be avoided after a case-by-case lifecycle assessment and a cost-benefit analysis, would be legislation that we could not in any way justify from the perspective of the feasibility and competitiveness of our waste management procedures. This option would only slow down the process and bring with it a huge amount of needless red tape. We now need to avoid blunders such as the two examples I have given. I am confident that the amendments that Mr Florenz and the rest of us have tabled together will help Parliament solve the problems that have accompanied these compromises.

  Riitta Myller (PSE). – (FI) Mr President, I think the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety has achieved an excellent result on waste legislation through compromise, and I hope that the work done on the committee also gets support in this Chamber.

A large majority on the committee were in favour of the five-step waste hierarchy remaining the cornerstone of EU policy on waste in the future. The most important section of the hierarchy is the reduction in volumes of waste. To achieve this aim we need clear targets binding on the Member States at EU level to reduce volumes of waste and increase re-use and recycling.

We also need to reassess our lifestyles. Our production and consumption habits need to move more in the direction of sustainability rather than the current culture of disposability. It has been said here that waste volumes are growing and growing all the time. Indeed they are, but in Finland, for example, we have already succeeded in controlling volumes of household waste. We nevertheless now really have to work hard to get waste volumes down.

The waste hierarchy is crucially important to us, but when clear environmental criteria based on life-cycle thinking allow us to show that alternative measures are sensible, there can be flexibility in this. Burning waste cannot be an option other than for landfill sites, and even then, of course, the criteria on emissions must be in effect.

  Šarūnas Birutis (ALDE). – (LT) Ladies and gentlemen, the more urbanised society becomes, the larger the amount of waste becomes, and the larger are the problems associated with its disposal. The amount of waste involved is enormous; therefore, this reality demonstrates the topicality of legal regulation of waste at the European level and the necessity of increasing people’s awareness in regard to dealing with waste disposal. I support the Commission’s initiative to revise the General Directive on Waste Disposal, making it less complicated and much clearer.

Sections 29–31 of the Directive set out new requirements for member countries to arrange national waste minimisation programmes. It is very important that more attention should be paid to the issue of waste, not only at the European level but also at the national level. However, the requirement to arrange a general waste minimisation programme for all types of waste is difficult to implement, since there are specific streams of waste and different possibilities for applying preventive measures. It would be more expedient to prepare guidelines for arranging national waste minimisation programmes and targeting certain types of waste for priority action, while leaving member countries the right to decide for themselves which other types of waste should also be targeted by the aforementioned programmes.

  Umberto Guidoni (GUE/NGL). – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union must at last provide itself with new instruments to limit waste generation by promoting re-use, recycling and recovery in order to reduce the adverse impact of waste on the environment. Without specific, Europe-wide recycling targets, the Member States that have not developed recycling technologies will try to achieve their landfill reduction targets by favouring incinerators and ignoring the environmentally friendlier steps.

The principle of the five-step hierarchy will not in itself be able to prevent that, and therefore we must aim at recycling at least 50% of biodegradable waste, promoting separate collection and recycling systems, and ensuring that re-usable or recyclable materials are not disposed of in landfills or incinerators.

Mrs Jackson’s amendments, whereby municipal waste incinerators may be classed as recovery rather than disposal facilities, do in fact undermine the application of the five priority stages and throw the door open to private incineration businesses. If we really want Europe to become the recycling society of the future, we must aim above all at prevention, cutting back waste generation and then encouraging re-use and recycling.

  Péter Olajos (PPE-DE). – (HU) The main goal of Europe’s new waste management reform is to reduce significantly the volume of waste deposited in landfills. With regard to the various elements of the reform, I wish now to say a few words about selective collection.

Looking around the European Union, we see a considerably diverse picture. A Europe that is united in so many respects has split in two on the subject of selective collection. Among those leading the field are Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany, where the proportion of municipal waste collected selectively stands at around 50%, while those bringing up the rear are at scarcely more than 2%. Similarly, great differences may be seen with regard to the selective collection of industrial waste. There are countries, Italy and the Netherlands, where this represents 80-90%, while in others it has hardly reached 10%.

My country, Hungary, provides a good example of this duality. Less than 2.5% of municipal waste is recycled, which is one of the lowest proportions among the EU Member States. In the case of industrial waste, on the other hand, this figure stands at over 70%, which puts us in a higher performance category.

Why this duality? Well, in Hungary selective waste collection was made mandatory for industry a few years ago. This is the main reason for this fine result of 70%. By contrast, the authorities wish to introduce selective collection of municipal waste on a voluntary basis, by creating waste collection islands. The result speaks for itself: only 2% of all domestic waste is collected selectively.

I believe that this example provides a good illustration of how important it is that we establish uniform, binding minimum goals for selective collection for all Member States, both for industrial and for domestic waste. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, please believe me that we will not need to spend as much time debating incineration if we succeed in resolving the question of selective collection.

  Karin Scheele (PSE). – (DE) Mr President, the increase in the amount of waste is disturbing, and by no means has sufficient use been made of the potential for preventing and recycling it. It is for this reason that the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety is in favour of mandatory targets for the reduction and prevention of waste, and also of any future European waste policy being founded upon the five-level hierarchy of waste. I hope that the reports adopted in the Committee on the Environment will also find a big majority in the plenary, for that will amount to a significant improvement over the Commission proposal.

It is of enormous importance that the distinction should continue to be drawn between the disposal and the reprocessing of waste; the Commission proposal no longer categorised the thermal treatment of domestic waste and similar refuse as removal, but rather as reprocessing, provided that the incineration facilities met certain criteria laid down in respect of energy efficiency. This approach would have had disastrous consequences in the shape of environmental dumping the length and breadth of Europe and a marked increase in waste tourism.

There would, in future, be nothing unproblematic and nothing illegal about transporting waste right across Europe and burning it wherever it was cheapest to do so and most damaging to the environment. It is important that the Member States should be able to invoke the proximity principle, which is now enshrined in Community law.

It was said today that we should seek out an approach that entails the minimum possible bureaucracy; well, my view is that that approach, that solution, would be for the municipalities to be, in future, responsible for the provision of municipal services of general interest, and capable of deciding for themselves how they would meet the demands of the new policy on waste, for not only would it minimise bureaucracy, it would also maximise democracy.

  Bogusław Sonik (PPE-DE). – (PL) Mr President, the European economy is creating huge quantities of industrial waste and increasing amounts of domestic waste. On average, each person is responsible for almost half a tonne of waste each year.

The most effective and long-term method of solving the problem of waste is not to create it in the first place. Our wasteful and inefficient methods of exploiting natural resources are having a huge impact on the environment. We can, however, effectively counter this by taking preventative action: reducing the quantity of waste, re-using products and re-processing waste into secondary raw materials, in other words, recycling.

I would like to draw your attention to a particularly striking proposal in the report on which we are voting. The proposal is to re-classify installations that thermally neutralise waste into waste recovery installations. Reclassifying waste incinerators will mean that in the eyes of the law, the transportation of waste for incineration between Member States will become legal, as it is legal to transport waste that is subject to recovery. This will lead to a significant influx of waste to the new from the richer Member States, where waste incineration is considerably more costly. Nine new waste incinerators, currently in the planning stage, may be set up with European Union funding. This would constitute using EU funds in a way that is exceedingly harmful to the environment and to society.

We cannot have a situation where a number of poorer states become a bonfire for waste from the whole of Europe, emitting vast quantities of carbon dioxide in the process. But that is exactly the situation provided for by Amendments 116, 133 and 135. Waste incineration contributes to climate change and pollutes the environment. It also increases our dependence on the import of valuable raw materials that could be obtained through recycling. A similar position was adopted by four environmental ministers of the Vyšehrad Group in May 2006. For this reason I appeal to all Members of this House to take these reservations into account, and not to vote for the change in the classification of waste.

  Dan Jørgensen (PSE). – (DA) Mr President, we are at present producing too much waste in Europe, and the quantity is unfortunately growing day by day. In actual fact, the percentage by which it is increasing is higher than that by which our wealth and also our GDP are increasing. We are now in a position in which every single European produces an average of 500 kilograms of waste per year. That is half a metric ton each, ladies and gentlemen. These are, of course, huge quantities, and something needs to be done about the situation. The primary objective of this legislation must therefore be to reduce the quantity of waste. It is ironic, I think, that we are all totally agreed on the targets but that these are not particularly clear from the Commission’s proposal. We are therefore in favour of having binding targets of both a qualitative and quantitative nature for reducing waste in Europe.

That being said, there are unfortunately other drawbacks too to the Commission’s proposal. A reading of the proposal reveals, firstly, that no great distinction is made between recycling and incinerating waste as long as, if it is incinerated, the waste is used for creating energy. That, emphatically, is wrong. Both processes are referred to as recovery, but appearances are deceptive in this case, as, from an environmental point of view, a huge amount more is recovered through the one process than through the other. For example, washing and then recycling a plastic bottle is obviously much more beneficial to the environment than incinerating it.

There is also another problem with the way in which the Commission has organised matters, for what we need are very specific requirements in those cases in which we are obliged to incinerate waste. That much is obvious. In those cases, we must require use to be made of the best technology in terms both of energy efficiency and also, of course, in terms of preventing the potentially harmful environmental consequences of incinerating waste.

We also wish to prevent cross-border environmental transport or environmental tourism, but that is what we shall have if we regard waste as a commodity.

To sum up: we must reduce the quantity of waste and we must ensure that there is a hierarchy of solutions, in which recycling takes significant precedence over incineration.

  Horst Schnellhardt (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, warm congratulations to the rapporteurs; Mrs Jackson has made crucial improvements to the Commission’s original proposal. I particularly want to consider the proposed hierarchy of waste treatment from the point of view of the conservation of resources; it is because of that that this directive needs also to be seen in the context of the security of energy supply, which is the burning issue of the day in Europe at the moment. Europe’s dependency on energy supplies from various third states puts the issue of the scarcity of resources and the protection of them at the centre of almost every policy debate, and so, in order to stabilise energy supply, reprocessing of waste should be given high priority. It may not, to be sure, guarantee the security of energy supply, but it is a small contribution to it. Let us take oil as an example of this. Since it is generally estimated that the world’s stocks of oil will have been used up by 2050, it strikes me as irresponsible for us in Europe to continue to burn waste oil in such large quantities when, across Europe, it is used to produce around a third of all lubricants – an example of good technology of the sort that ought to be promoted in future.

Yes, of course, flexibility is vital; after all, paper cannot be reclaimed and reprocessed an infinite number of times, and that is why I think the amendment that has been tabled on the subject of flexibility is so extremely important and relevant. For the sake of legal certainty, though – particularly where reprocessing is concerned – it is very important that, when the directive is transposed, it should be clearly laid down precisely when a substance is still waste and when it is that it becomes a product. There must be no legal grey areas here, for they result only in fraud and uncertainty, which we cannot afford.

Let me conclude by saying something about the revision of the landfill directive. It is indeed the case that the disposal of waste in landfill sites is to be cut back, but the argument based on the alleged discharge from them of methane, which damages the environment, takes us down blind alleys. The technology exists to deal with this, and even now the gas is being trapped and turned into biogas. That is something we should take into account. Quite apart from that, I endorse the proposal from Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf on the subject of the reprocessing of foodstuffs, and I suggest that you, Commissioner, should have a rethink about that.

  Justas Vincas Paleckis (PSE). – (LT) I congratulate the rapporteur, especially his ambitious commitment to slowing down the dangerous growth of the mountain of waste. If a turnabout is not achieved, it will no longer be people who bury the waste, it will bury us. The time has come for us to learn to live differently, because, as with climate change, the consequences may be difficult to eliminate, if not fatal.

In Lithuania, as in most new European Union Member States, the disposal of waste in landfill dumps is still the most widespread method of dealing with it. Municipal councils lack the specialists and the funds that would be required for waste minimisation, sorting and recycling. The majority of people are still not prepared to support progressive methods of dealing with waste, and there is a lack of legal control. Manufacturers and importers try to avoid responsibility for dealing with waste.

The European Union consistently commits large sums of money to improving this situation. I would like to encourage old EU Member States to actively pass on to the newcomers their experience in stimulating private investment in waste management, improving legal control, and explaining to people the need to protect the environment and not to lop off the branch on which we all sit.

  Ambroise Guellec (PPE-DE). – (FR) Mr President, no doubt like all of our fellow Members here, in this House, I feel that we need a clear European framework in order to overcome the major challenge of responsible waste management.

I also believe that we all share the view that the new European strategy on waste must show that waste, in all its guises, is not only a source of pollution to be reduced, but also a potential resource to be exploited. That is why I have no hesitation in supporting the process under way, and I welcome the remarkable work that has been done by our rapporteur in terms of modernising the laws that have been amassed for 30 years on this subject.

It is therefore crucial, as many Members have also pointed out, to clearly re-establish the five-stage hierarchy in descending order of priority: prevention, re-use, recycling, recovery and disposal. This should be done by maintaining a minimum level of flexibility, with account taken, in particular, of the economic aspects that affect the sectors. It has also become apparent what the cost might be of seeking exemptions from these kinds of constraints, which are imperative.

I should like to reiterate that I fully support the amendments aimed at consolidating the definitions, not least those on the end-of-life of waste, on producer responsibility and on prevention. Finally, I believe that it is important, as many of our fellow Members have also pointed out, to enhance the legislation on hazardous waste, not least by imposing the requirement for this waste to be collected separately and for there to be a reliable way of tracing it.

  Marie-Noëlle Lienemann (PSE) . – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to emphasise three points with a view to having our Parliament improve the directive.

Firstly, we need quantified targets, in particular for waste reduction, which our Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety was right to establish as a long-term objective. This is important not only where protecting the environment is concerned, but also when it comes to making us less vulnerable in the area of supplies of raw materials, which we know are much fought-over in the world.

Secondly, if incineration cannot be prohibited, then maximum restrictions must be imposed on it. This is a form of disposal, not recovery. Of course, energy production is better than disposal, but let us not get confused: incineration is a form of disposal.

Thirdly, we need to strengthen the principles of proximity and self-sufficiency in relation to waste management, especially for the various forms of disposal and incineration, otherwise we are going to see an almost uncontrollable phenomenon develop regarding the transport of waste, with an increase in greenhouse gases and in the risks of environmental dumping. The fact is that the best practices are not always the cheapest.

Weakening the principle of proximity in order to create a large market in waste would benefit the large economic groups concerned and not the environment. To do so is therefore unacceptable.

  Thomas Ulmer (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful to Mrs Jackson and to Mr Blokland for the good work they have done. Waste – of which the 27 EU Member States produce 1.3 billion tonnes per annum – is a core issue rather than a marginal one.

As I see it, it is easy to define the goals but difficult to achieve them. Preventing waste must be first on the list, and, if the amount of waste generated is to remain stable until 2012 and decrease thereafter, a number of steps will have to be taken, among them an eco-design product directive, more responsibility on the part of manufacturers, the traceability of hazardous substances and a properly thought-out recycling system. It is more important to recycle waste than to reprocess it, just as in medicine, it is more important to rehabilitate people than to give them a disability pension. These things hang together perfectly.

No quarter is being given in the arguments about this. In my own country, the municipal service-providers’ association has over EUR 60 billion in turnover and precious little love of open competition, of which I take a positive view, seeing it as benefiting both customers and the environment. We need only to lay down the ground rules for this competition, not the details of it. It is the portability of waste that needs to be regulated by reference to the materials and the risks involved, not the issue of who should transport it.

My thinking on this subject revolves round the future tasks of recycling and product design, for it is here that I see Europe having the chance of building a future on technology and the protection of the environment.

I am all in favour of an open internal market of the kind on which we in the Committee on the Environment have agreed; it is absurd to believe that more and more new and restrictive measures will get Europe any further along the path mapped out by the Lisbon Strategy. I also believe that municipal service providers stand a good chance when they compete in a growing market.

  Nikolaos Sifunakis (PSE). – (EL) Commissioner, firstly I congratulate you on the position which you expressed in the Commission as regards vehicles.

Even though progress in waste management has been made over recent years, there are still huge differences between the Member States as regards the volume of waste that is re-used or recycled and as regards its method of disposal.

In my country, for example, and perhaps to a lesser degree in other countries, a very large proportion of waste ends up in uncontrolled dumps and re-use or recycling are underdeveloped.

Today, as my honourable friend Mr Sonik said earlier, about one and half tonnes of waste are generated annually per average European citizen, most of which ends up in landfills, not in residue landfills.

Re-use and recycling are at excessively low levels and we have not done much to reduce or even stabilise overall waste generation.

The negative effects will only be addressed if we create national programmes to put prevention first and reduce the amount of waste to start with. Just think that in Greece in the year 2000 there were 4.5 million tonnes of waste and in 2006 there were 6 million tonnes of waste.

We therefore need to set up a hierarchy of targets which prioritise reductions in the volume of waste, re-use, recycling and recovery and lay down a specific implementation timetable which is common to all the Member States.

  András Gyürk (PPE-DE). – (HU) From Hungary’s perspective, today’s debate on revising the framework Directive on waste has become unexpectedly relevant. In recent weeks the Hungarian police has initiated legal proceedings for repeated infringements of waste management regulations through the illegal shipment and dumping of a large amount of waste from Germany into Hungary. Such an act is, of course, in violation of the current rules, but at the same time highlights the need for effective and Europe-wide regulations. Such regulations should take into consideration, beyond binding recycling targets, the different abilities and resources of Member States and regions.

Based on this, I would like to bring to your attention three viewpoints in the present debate. First, in addition to the waste hierarchy, we must consider the social costs of the treatment of given wastes at particular levels of the hierarchy. This way the application of the waste hierarchy can not only benefit the environment but can contribute to the efficient use of natural resources as well as to reducing energy dependence.

Second, the principles of proximity and self-sufficiency must be emphasised, since the transport of waste, and especially the increasing volume of hazardous waste, result in significant environmental problems.

Thirdly, it would be appropriate to make room for market-compatible tools in the regulation of waste management. Although technical specifications, for instance limit values, are in many cases unavoidable, we could assign a greater role to external fees for waste production that internalise its economic costs.

I trust the directive to be formulated will also take into account the above points and as a result, people will not have to worry about their neighbourhood becoming a garbage dump, as was recently the case, unfortunately, in Hungary.

  Adam Gierek (PSE). – (PL) Mr President, the Directive states that the harmonisation of terminology and the definition of waste will improve the effectiveness of waste management in the Community. However, in the present draft, loose terminology has increased problems of interpretation.

For example, it contains a definition of recycling of materials defining it as ‘recovery and re-processing of waste into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes’, without specifying what these ‘other purposes’ are. Nor does it distinguish between a product that may become waste from a material and a substance. In its formulation, for example, scrap created within steelworks could be treated as waste that completely bypasses the recycling loop to the plant via the market, and may become an element of abuse.

I would also like to draw attention to another issue already raised by my colleagues here, which is that minimising costs, which includes the social costs, of implementing the directive, is made largely dependent on a more balanced treatment of recycling and other forms of reclaiming materials, and a certain liberalisation of the waste hierarchy for those countries that are not yet ready for costly recycling. However, we must develop effective systems for collection, separation and disassembly in order to encourage ordinary EU citizens to dismantle and recycle materials rather than incinerate them. Unfortunately, I see none of this in the Directive.

  Zsolt László Becsey (PPE-DE). – (HU) First of all, I would like to congratulate the two rapporteurs. I believe they have performed a significant task and – along with those who have spoken before me – I must express my appreciation of the way in which, in connection with the report, we are now establishing the hierarchy and giving primary importance to prevention.

The reason I asked for the floor has to do, in practice, with two points. I would like to mention my two favourite sayings. First: we cannot take medication and drink alcohol at the same time; in other words, we need to take into account that through enlargement, we have seen the arrival of a region that is increasingly diversified but also ever more vulnerable. Secondly, we cannot say that every operation has been a success, only unfortunately the patient has died.

Why am I saying this? As my colleague Mr Gyürk has previously stated, I too am experiencing in my own electoral district that an enormous quantity of rubbish and domestic waste is arriving in Central and Eastern Europe. The reason for this is that in Germany it is clearly much cheaper to get rid of waste – even if illegally, larded with a few corrupt methods – than to sort it locally and recycle it by means of an extremely bureaucratic process.

For this reason, the first message is that we must be careful with bureaucratisation, and try to make sure that waste is indeed recycled at source. The second is that we must see to it that waste is at all times successfully disposed of and is traceable, since otherwise it is impossible to achieve results. As well, we will soon have to establish categories of criminal sanctions in this matter, I believe, if the ‘polluter pays’ principle does not seem to be working.

I find it unacceptable that we as victims should be the ones who have to prove where the waste originates from, and that we should have to bear the cost of its disposal. In practice, this runs counter to every European philosophy and legal principle, and we need to take measures to put an end to this situation.

  Joseph Muscat (PSE). – (MT) Mr President, there is no doubt that we must focus as much as we can on environmental regulation. However, I believe we must also pay closer attention to the local implementation of these regulations. Commissioner, you are well aware of what is going on in Malta at present, where the decision was taken, against all reason or logic, to build a mega recycling plant instead of opting for a regional solution. This action has proved, beyond all doubt, that the way this decision was taken goes against every rule that exists when it comes to taking decisions on adopting proper and transparent consultation processes. Suffice to say that when the supposed list of alternative sites was drawn up, not one of the sites mentioned was large enough to accommodate this recycling plant, and therefore, very conveniently, the type of plant chosen was the one favoured by the government. The planning regulations that are enforced with much zeal when weak individuals are involved were flouted to such an extent that even the Maltese ombudsman had to intervene. Shortly after your meeting with the local residents, Commissioner, the authorities stepped up the pace as much as possible in order to try to close this chapter, once and for all, as best suited them. We acknowledge that the Commission is looking into this case; however, we now need to act as quickly as possible and, in so doing, prove that the European Union is capable of ensuring that its written laws are implemented at local level in the best way possible. Thank you.

  Richard Seeber (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, I, too, would like to thank Mrs Jackson and Mr Blokland for the outstanding work that they have done, but I would ask the Commission to back us on two points that are of particular importance to my own country – Austria – and also to Germany. One has to do with catering waste, which is sterilised using a particular treatment process in which they are heated to over 130° and can then be re-used for feeding pigs. This is something that we see as being of enormous importance, and it also reflects the circulatory concept of waste management, since waste that is not needed by human beings can be taken out of the food chain, sterilised, and then put to good use as animal feed.

There is also the question of biowaste; here, too, I would like to ask the Commission to follow the examples of a few Member States that have very well-developed and well-functioning systems to deal with biowaste, and bring in a proposal in addition to the one we have already, although it should also take a favourable view of the amendments tabled by our group in particular.

Generally speaking, this is where we get close to a core issue in our prosperous society, in that we must at last succeed in decoupling economic growth – which is generally desirable – from the growth in the volume of waste, both in relative and absolute terms. It is not acceptable that the mountain of refuse should be constantly growing, and that we should think ourselves richer as a result. As is envisaged, this state of affairs must be stabilised by 2012 at the latest.

Even though I see the proposed measures – including a mandatory hierarchy with the possibility of deviation from it only when this is clearly justified by life-cycle analyses – as the right way to go about it, I do nevertheless believe that the Member States need to transpose this in the right way, with the Commission monitoring it properly, if the abuses described by some Members are to be avoided.

  Proinsias De Rossa (PSE). – Mr President, I oppose the proposal to reclassify incineration as recovery rather than disposal: such a move will encourage incineration rather than reduction, recovery and reuse.

I welcome the idea that we should stabilise waste production by 2012 at 2008 levels. This will be difficult for a number of Member States, not least my own, where waste – domestic waste in particular – has increased by 44% over the last 10 years. The Environmental Protection Agency in Ireland has pointed out that something like 25% of domestic waste in Ireland is unaccounted for and we know that the Commission is already investigating a number of illegal dumps in Ireland where this domestic waste – and some industrial waste also – is going. There is a serious need to police the regulations we put in place: it is not enough to have laws in place, we have to police them and ensure that penalties are sufficient to deter dumping of this kind.

  Stavros Dimas, Member of the Commission. Mr President, first of all I would like to thank all the speakers in tonight’s debate for their very constructive positions. I would like to outline the Commission’s view on a number of key issues raised by Parliament. I will start with those aspects of the thematic strategy not covered in the directive.

I welcome the support given in the report to developing common European minimum standards. The next step will be a new proposal to regulate certain additional waste treatment activities under the IPPC directive. I also agree with the emphasis placed on preventing waste and notably on the role chemicals policy and eco-design could play in this respect. Finally, the resolution you have approved proposes a number of additional measures for increasing recycling and recovery of waste. The Commission will take this into account when developing further measures implementing the strategy.

Let me now turn to the waste framework directive. Many of the amendments adopted by the European Parliament provide useful clarifications to the proposal and can be accepted. Others would have consequences that would be undesirable. I would like first of all to comment on some of the points made in tonight’s debate and on some of the key amendments that the Commission can accept in full, in principle, or in part.

The Commission can accept the stricter and clearer reference to a five-step waste hierarchy. However, it is important that we recognise that the hierarchy needs to be applied in order to take the best environmental option. Excessive procedural requirements such as those set out in the second part of the amendment will not help to achieve this.

The Commission can also accept a number of useful clarifications with regard to some important definitions including waste prevention and recycling. In addition, elements such as the promotion of reuse and producer responsibility can be supported in principle. The Commission also welcomes the reference to the interpretative communication on by-products, which I hope will satisfy the need for clarity in this domain when it is adopted very shortly. However, there are also a number of amendments that the Commission cannot support.

Firstly, the Commission is committed to having clear and unambiguous definitions of the key terms in this directive. As I stated earlier, the amendments proposed in relation to reuse and to recovery and disposal do not meet this test. The recovery and disposal distinction is a key framework condition for the functioning of the European recycling market. It needs to be applied by the authorities in order to process waste shipment decisions, and the recovery definition in the directive must be sufficiently clear and robust to allow this to happen. Otherwise, there will be frequent and unnecessary referrals to the Court of Justice and this would adversely affect recycling activities and the environmental benefit they can deliver.

Secondly, it is important to deal with the grey area in the energy recovery definition with regard to classifying municipal incinerators, where the amendments proposed do not tackle the issue and weaken the level of environmental protection. This problem dates back ten years and we need to find a compromise now in order to deal with it clearly in this revision.

Making the efficiency criterion from the Commission proposal obligatory for municipal incinerators and extending this to co-incineration facilities as well is not the answer to the question. It will be neither technically possible nor environmentally useful.

Thirdly, certain amendments are either unnecessary references, duplicate other elements of European Union legislation, or add an unnecessary administrative burden for stakeholders or the European Union institutions. Notably, a number of the amendments relating to hazardous waste would penalise businesses handling such waste for no apparent environmental benefit and in some cases are technically impossible to implement.

For example, it is not good for the environment to have a total ban on the mixing of hazardous waste with other waste: it could lead to substandard treatment of some kinds of hazardous waste. More generally, it is essential that the work on developing common standards for the recycling market, such as the end-of-waste criteria, should be allowed to reach its full potential. These standards are necessarily technical and must adapt to improvements in environmental performance in order not to become a drag on eco-innovation. The time taken by the preparation and the procedures for codecision means that this is an inappropriate route for such technical work and some comitology will be necessary.

Finally, I wanted to comment on the amendments relating to waste prevention. Waste prevention, as I said before, is one of the key elements of this revision. I welcome the support for the waste prevention programmes in the report. I also understand the approach behind the inclusion of a waste prevention target. However, the target, as presented in the relevant amendments, is too bland. It will have an uneven impact on different Member States – too difficult for some, not ambitious enough for others – and it will be difficult to interpret and enforce. I cannot, therefore, accept the amendments in question.

As I have already explained, this is a framework directive, whose role cannot be to regulate specific recycling targets. Such targets will be elaborated and proposed by the Commission in the near future.

Many speakers have asked for specific legislation, for example in areas such as bio-waste. The Commission is examining ways to make legislative proposals in this field.

Many other speakers raised issues which are not to be dealt with in this directive, such as illegal cross-border shipments of waste, for which we have special legislation. Municipal waste cannot be transported across borders for incineration, even if the municipal incinerator across the border is classified as recovery. A Member State may oppose such a transfer.

We have a prohibition on the dumping of waste in the developing world both in European Union law and international law: the Basel ban. A few days ago, a directive was proposed to punish environmental crimes.

Soil pollution from illegal landfilling is covered by the Landfill Directive and the soil thematic strategy. The conclusion must be that the role of the waste framework directive is not to deal with special dysfunctions.

I now turn to the 92 amendments tabled just before the plenary. We welcome some of the suggestions, such as maintaining the energy efficiency formula as a basis for distinguishing between recovery and disposal for municipal incinerators, but we cannot accept certain other amendments.

However, given the volume and timing of these amendments, I will need to reserve the position of the Commission.

To sum up, I am pleased to say that the Commission can accept 42 of the amendments tabled by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety – 15 in full and 27 in principle or in part. I shall give a complete list of the Commission’s position on the amendments to Parliament’s Secretariat.

I should like to thank the rapporteurs once again for their efforts and excellent work. Thank you very much for your attention.

  President. – The debate is closed.

The vote will take place tomorrow at 12 noon.

Written statements (Rule 142)

  Gyula Hegyi (PSE), in writing. – (HU) Recently in Hungary, several scandals have drawn attention to how easy it is to outwit waste disposal policies. Illegal bulk waste shipments have been delivered from Western Europe to both Hungary and the Czech Republic.

If we want to prevent the dumping of Western Europe’s trash on new Member States, we need a new framework directive that leaves no loopholes, while putting great emphasis on waste prevention. Self-assessment by companies is insufficient – official controls are also needed.

Furthermore, it is important to re-use and recycle the waste produced, according to the five-stage hierarchy contained in the framework directive, thereby minimising the amount of waste that ends up in dump sites. I would suggest as well that when new regulations are introduced regarding waste concerns, the European Commission build into them a central registration of waste shipments, which would make for easier verification. Uniform, compulsory labelling on the outside of vehicles used for waste shipment would also be useful. I expect action from the Commission on this matter as soon as possible.

  Jules Maaten (ALDE). – (NL) Today, the European Parliament decided in the Waste Substances Directive that the quantity of waste must be stabilised between 2008 and 2012 and that the amount of waste Europe produces must be reduced considerably by 2020. Whilst I endorse the conclusions, I should also like to make an urgent appeal to the European Parliament to set a good example. All citizens have their own responsibility to shoulder in this respect, and MEPs are no exception.

First of all, it would be a big step forward if we were to limit the number of working languages from 23 to 2 or 3, for despite all technologies at our fingertips, the European Parliament is still producing a huge quantity of paper, 99% of which is destined for the waste paper basket.

Secondly, there is now more reason than ever to designate Brussels as the seat for the European Parliament. The monthly move of MEPs and staff to Strasbourg is not only a waste of money, but also contributes to the CO2 emissions.

Thirdly, Parliament’s official cars need replacing. The group chairmen are currently driving around in Mercedeses and Audis, although there are cars out there that are far more economical. I propose disposing of these polluting cars and replacing them with their economical, hybrid counterparts. This will also hopefully work as an incentive for German car manufacturers to start complying with European standards.

Annex – Commission position

- Jackson (A6-0466/2006) and Blokland (A6-0438/2006) reports

There are 42 amendments which the Commission can accept fully, in part, or in principle.

It accepts 15 amendments in full: 23, 27, 28, 31, 34, 44, 47, 49, 62, 78, 90, 92, 94, 95 and 97.

It accepts 27 amendments in principle or in part: 1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 30, 33, 35, 38, 40, 45, 56, 57, 63, 64, 66, 69, 74, 75, 77 and 96.

It cannot accept 55 amendments: 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 26, 29, 32, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 79 – 89, 91 and 93.

It reserves its position on the Amendments from 98 onwards, due to their number and the short amount of time for the Commission to prepare its position.