From: "Focus Eco Center" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Citizens to foot the bill for the river polluters,
say environmental NGOs Brussels, Belgium - The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and WWF, on behalf of 17 national environmental organisations, have submitted a complaint to the European Commission asking to open an infringement procedure against eleven EU Member States for failure to correctly apply the EU Water Framework Directive. Environmental NGOs say that if the 'polluter pays' principle continues not to be applied, citizens will have pay the whole bill and the main goal of the directive - good ecological status of all European waters by 2015 - will not be achieved. The countries concerned by the complaint are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and The Netherlands. The Water Framework Directive requires EU countries to assess what proportion of water service costs (abstraction and discharge, dams, dykes, transfers), including environmental damage and resource loss, are paid for by water users (households, navigation, hydropower, industry and agriculture among others). The Directive obliges countries to adequately distribute those costs using the "polluter pays" principle. This principle provides essential incentives to reduce environmental damage and generate the money required to achieve the directive's environmental objectives. However, eleven Member States have limited the economic appraisal to public drinking water supply and waste water treatment or collection, thus excluding infrastructures such as dams, weirs and dykes serving hydropower, navigation, agricultural irrigation and drainage and flood defence. This leads to a situation where many infrastructures already identified as a major environmental problem, will be exempted from any transparent economic assessment and citizens, who already pay substantial water prices, could be charged even higher prices to cover for the damage caused by businesses. "EU leaders have committed again and again to promoting economic instruments in order to tackle the decline of our natural resources, but they don't seem to bother and at least correctly apply relevant laws. Most authorities exclude water activities which are major environmental problems and often heavily subsidised, from being defined as 'water services' and consequently from exposing their financial and environmental costs", said Stefan Scheuer, Policy Director at EEB. The complaint refers to the situation of some of the last rivers with outstanding natural value in Europe, such as Vistula in Poland; Danube in Germany, Austria and Hungary; Elbe in Germany, Kemijoki in Finland and Shannon in Ireland. "It is the first time that we submit a complaint of such scale. Countries like France and Latvia have shown that doing much better is possible, so we expect the European Institutions to act swiftly and do everything in their powers to ensure the correct application of the directive", added Sergey Moroz, Water Policy Officer at WWF. According to the EU Treaty, the European Commission can open an infringement procedure against EU Member States following a complaint from citizens and NGOs. Hajdu Zoltán general coordinator Focus Eco Center 0040-265-262.170 0040-365-803.631 Web: www.focuseco.ro -- "Let me know, that at least, she will try Then she'll be a true love of mine" www.arin.ro ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Great things are happening at Yahoo! Groups. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/TISQkA/hOaOAA/yQLSAA/DXOolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Sageata Albastra e cea mai mare tzeapa a transportului public! Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/protest-ro/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
