Mr President. I think it is accepted by most people that the existing laws are much too lenient and it is important that some sort of provision is put in place to ensure that criminal law cases are possible. In the present situation there is no incentive whatsoever either for companies to clean up their act, to take responsibility to ensure that negligence does not occur. This has a knock-on effect on other companies as well. When it comes to taking legal action it is up to individual citizens themselves to take up these cases and that can be extremely difficult and expensive. Of course, people can be up against big companies with huge amounts of power and resources at their disposal which makes it very very difficult in many cases for them to pursue these cases to the end and ensure that the companies pay the price. They really are criminals who through negligence or through deliberate action are destroying the environment, affecting human health, affecting our flora and fauna and causing in many other ways long-term damage, all in the interest of profit. Companies that manage land and sea transport, for example, have in many cases absolutely no sense of responsibility and it is essential for some sort of sanctions to be put in place to ensure that they are forced to act responsibly. Governments should provide more information and make clear to the public the scale and effects of environmental crime because many sections of our society are unaware of this. For example in relation to water, soil, our health, flora, fauna and indeed climate, it is extremely important that proper information is made available. Moreover it is not just companies. Sometimes it is national authorities who are actually flouting the law and behaving in an utterly negligent way. I do not have to go any further than my own country to see that in many cases local authorities and so on are actually responsible themselves for environmental damage. And, when it comes to enforcing the law in relation to companies that are operating in their area, they are negligent in that respect as well. It seems that profit comes before the interests of the public and the environment. That should not be allowed to continue and authorities who fail to enforce the law should themselves be held liable for the environmental damage caused as a result. Whether it is deliberate or through negligence, at the end of the day it makes very little difference because the damage is done. In many cases companies use the argument of negligence rather than saying it is deliberate but in fact negligence in its way is deliberate. These firms knew the consequences and they should be held accountable for the complete and total cost of cleaning up the damage that they have caused wherever possible. The other thing I would like to point out is that there are companies, such as British Nuclear Fuels, who have absolutely no sense of public responsibility or environmental awareness. They have been causing pollution for such a long, long time the length of our coast by polluting the Irish Sea and putting the public in Ireland, and indeed on the west coast of the United Kingdom, at serious risk. You only have to look at what happened in Chernobyl which again was due to a negligent attitude. How long is that going to take to rectify? These situations can no longer be allowed in a world where we should be fully aware of the environmental problems that we are causing. We have the technology, the know-how and the resources to ensure that these things do not happen. The Erika is another example of negligence. I would also like to support the last speaker who talked about animal transport. This is deliberate exploitation and ill-treatment of animals and should be taken into account as well. On an international level we have seen many many disasters in the past, just to take Bhopal as an example. Cost-cutting and cutting corners caused the biggest environmental disaster in history. That company still has not been held properly and legally responsible. It was taken to court in India. The head of the company was supposed to be arrested and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He absconded to the United States where he has decided to stay and has not come back to face the consequences of his action, even despite warrants from Interpol. Then there are the issues of forestry and fishing. The malpractice of many fishing activities should be taken into account because it is also an environmental crime which has long-term consequences. It is about time that we all faced up to our responsibilities because we have not only ourselves and our environment to think of but future generations as well. The only way we are going to do that is to ensure that environmental damage is considered one of the most serious crimes in our society.

Political group: Verts-ALE