Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the report we are going to vote on tomorrow has kept us very busy in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy over recent months, particularly the rapporteur, Mrs Corbey, whom I would like to congratulate, because this subject is far from easy and she has had to work very hard. The amendment of the packaging Directive will have significant implications for the various agents concerned. For public administrations, for selective collection systems, for companies producing materials and packaging, for the agri-food industry and – most importantly – for the consumer. Because without the cooperation of the consumer, this Directive will not be complied with in any country. It is clear that we must set quantitative targets and that they must be ambitious, but it is also the case that the targets must be achievable. We must be aware that in certain Member States the targets will be more difficult to achieve due to a historical lack of infrastructures, low population densities or consumer habits. We are debating a Directive which must have a sufficient degree of flexibility in order to allow national laws to be brought into line with it and furthermore we cannot oblige consumers to separate the waste from the containers in order to facilitate collection. This is something they must do voluntarily as a result of education. The recovery and recycling targets proposed by the Commission for 2006 are particularly ambitious for the majority of Member States and we must acknowledge that certain Member States will not be able to achieve them. However, the Group of the European People’s Party is going to support the approval of the percentages proposed, but maintaining the upper limits, because the proposal already provides for the possible exceeding of these limits with the permission of the Commission. We are opposed, however, to the idea of specific objectives for each material, since they would lead to a distortion in competition between materials and reduce the consumer’s scope for choice. Our proposal – in Amendment No 45 – is a minimum of 25% for all materials, along the same lines as the Directive in force, although we know that for the plastics sector 25% will be a very difficult target to reach. The fact that the objective is 25% will not prevent it from being exceeded. Under the current Directive, with 15%, objectives of 70 or 80% for recycling are being achieved in certain countries, but nevertheless, this is going to promote free competition between materials within a free market. I personally believe – and I am not now speaking on behalf of the Group – that the broad objectives for recovery and recycling must be set at local level by the competent authorities, who have the best knowledge of their capacities, their infrastructures and the habits of their consumers. The Commission proposes that the objectives be fulfilled by June 2006, and our proposal is that that date be put back to 31 December 2006, because it is more practical to discuss and take stock by calendar years and because, furthermore, it is a very tight deadline. In the light of this, I also understand the desire to put compliance with the Directive back to 2008. Moreover, the Member States are going to have little time to bring their legislation into line in view of the codecision procedure, which is going to increase the time it takes to adopt the Directive. However, I believe that delay is a message which Parliament should not send. On the other hand, I do support differentiated targets and time limits for certain Member States such as Ireland, Greece and Portugal, for whom it is very difficult to keep up with the proposed pace. We also believe that a prevention objective is not necessary, because, for environmental and economic reasons, such as the payment of the ‘Green point’, which exists in certain countries such as my own, industry is already trying to reduce as far as possible the amount of material used in the manufacture of packaging. We should bear in mind that the volume of packaging on the market also depends on the quantity of products sold, not just on the materials used in their manufacture. We are in favour of shared responsibility, so that the manufacturer uses the maximum amount of resources to ensure that the product is appropriately packaged, that the consumer cooperates in the collection of waste and that the municipal authorities manage the volume of waste and recover value from it wherever possible. We also opt – in Amendment No 44 – for recycling and re-use being promoted equally by the Member States, in accordance with their particular circumstances and infrastructures. We must be flexible. Industry is already making efforts to improve the design of its products and to make them more environment-friendly, because this is an aspect which the consumer is increasingly sensitive to, and we should not forget that the Directive we wish to amend arose originally as a result of problems relating to the operation of the internal market. I would like to make a final observation, and that is that this proposal, like the others presented to us, is intended to be complied with by all the Member States and that the socio-economic conditions, infrastructures, traditions and ways of life vary very widely from one country to another, and this will be even more the case following enlargement. We in the European Union must therefore implement rules which set minimums which everybody can achieve and which can be raised for anybody who is in a position to meet them. When the application of legislation becomes a question of exceptions and non-compliances, it is because something is not working.

Political group: PPE-DE