Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, noise is disturbing an increasing number of people in Europe. Ten years ago, in the Fifth Environmental Action Programme, the European Commission estimated that 25% of the citizens of the EU were disturbed by noise from cars, trucks, aircraft, motorcycles, mopeds, trains, factories and boats. The Commission now estimates that one in every three Europeans complains about noise. In my own country, the Netherlands, this is 40%. Noise, especially at night, annoys more and more people. More than 10 million citizens in the EU are sleep-disturbed as a result. Too much noise from infrastructure affects the health of human beings, and reduces their quality of life. Eight years ago, the Commission promised to come forward with legislative proposals for European harmonised noise indicators before 1994 and for EU-wide noise standards before 1995. Only this year, six years overdue, and under enormous pressure from the French Government, has the Commission at last proposed European harmonised noise indicators. Those proposals are sound. Lnight is an efficient indicator for sleep disturbance and the overall noise indicator Lden is probably the best in its field. This indicator sets 12 hours for the day, 4 hours for the evening and 8 hours for the night. Noise at night is calculated times 10 and noise in the evening times 5. The night should be eight hours long and that is of key importance, because at Frankfurt airport, the night is still only 6 hours long, compared to 6.5 hours at Heathrow and 7 hours at Schiphol. Most people need eight hours sleep. Lden is an annual average. The only time when Lden is not the most appropriate indicator is for high-pitched, short-term noise which is often generated by industrial plants. That is why the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy has suggested introducing the LA-max indicator. Subsidiarity – as will soon transpire from the debate – is an important element which the Environmental Committee would like to honour. It is left to the discretion of the Member States to determine when evening and the subsequent night fall. If people in Scandinavia wish to retire at 10 p.m. and the Spanish only at midnight, then that is not a problem, but those starting times for evening and night should be brought into line for all modes of transport, aircraft, road and rail, as well as industrial noise. The Environmental Committee has criticised the European Commission’s hesitation to propose EU noise standards. The Environmental Committee proposes turning them into a framework law with four daughter directives which encompass aircraft noise, noise from roads, rail noise and noise from industrial plants, but each time with a combined approach. An EU standard for noise as well as EU noise standards for aircraft, cars, trucks, trains and installations in plants. The Environmental Committee’s most controversial proposal is to develop a daughter directive on aircraft noise at this early stage. In this proposal, the Environmental Committee lays down specific standards for the years 2006, 2012 and 2020. Setting ever stricter noise standards must reduce noise levels of aircraft around airports. It is a moderate proposal, for Scandinavia already has stricter standards in place than those proposed for the year 2012. But major airports, such as Heathrow, Frankfurt and Paris will need to make considerable efforts to meet the initial set of standards by 2006. What is required, however, is a level playing field. I will give you one example: the Dutch Government introduced the margins of the night at Beek airport, which amounted to a flight ban between 1 and 5 a.m. As a result, noisy aircraft took their freight transport to Ostend, the Belgian seaside resort, which met with protest from the people in Ostend. At present, exactly the same noisy aircraft land in the middle of the night at the airport of Liège, 60 km south of Maastricht. That is not doing the European citizens any good, and that is why these standards are required.

Political group: Verts-ALE