Mr President, we are currently debating a directive which concerns participation by the public in decisions which affect the environment. It is the second pillar in the legislative work whose purpose is to ratify, within the Community, the Aarhus Convention which was concluded in 1998. I wish to express my thanks for the fact that my draft report has received copious and unanimous support in many of the points which I have put forward. The report has, however, also stirred up some political passions. It must be possible to find a balance between, on the one hand, guaranteeing broad opportunities for participation by citizens, and, on the other hand, avoiding deliberate and vexatious delaying tactics. This task is not easy, especially as the structure of the Commission's basic proposal is very complicated. The vote taken the week before last in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy led to an unfortunate and illogical conclusion, which must now be rectified in plenary session so that we can correct a situation which is embarrassing from the point of view of the Parliament's reputation. At the moment, the report version approved in Committee contains some mutually contradictory ingredients. I personally feel that not enough time was available to discuss and to understand the basic starting point which I put forward, and its practical consequences. I stated that information gathering and public hearing concern the entire public at large, but I limited the legal safeguards following the decision to a more restricted public, in other words those whose rights are infringed by the decision. It was only in this point that I failed to receive the support which I had hoped for from the major groups. I wished to open the consultation stage to the public at large, since there is a very peculiar logic in a situation whereby an authority ends up determining in advance which part of the public a matter concerns. How could the authority know who will be affected by it, and in what way, before the public has been heard on the issue? And if this is already known, then hearing the public is a pointless exercise. Such restriction is odd from the point of view of public participation, and also squanders the time and energy of the authority itself. Since colleagues have feared that my approach means that anyone may take an authority to court, I wish to stress that just the opposite is the case. It is precisely the Commission's version which – in setting demanding obligations for the authority – would achieve this result. In my proposal, the right of appeal is restricted solely to those whose rights are infringed by a decision, so that appeal is not used with deliberately vexatious intent. The opportunity to express an opinion will not automatically imply the right of appeal. In the Commission's proposal, the public's right of participation was restricted at all stages to that public which the matter concerns. I continue to hold that the Commission's proposal is misguided in this respect; its practical consequences will create needless difficulties in the work of the authorities. Authorities will face uncommon difficulties in establishing whom a matter concerns; this includes all civic organisations, which according to the Commission's proposal are always interested parties. Failure or negligence at this stage will always form grounds for taking the matter to court. Without a doubt, in the form proposed by the Commission these provisions are indeed open to abuse – and this abuse can also take the form of slowing down projects. My proposal was unusual in that it would have simultaneously benefited citizens who genuinely wish to participate, and also the authorities dealing with the matter and those players whose project was in question. Perhaps the matter may still be rectified when the Member States have to ponder the practical application of the matter in more detail. The explanation which I have given here is, in my opinion, important from the point of view of all parties who have anything to do with the directive. Fortunately many other matters which are important from the point of view of the Aarhus convention have been received positively. I have, first and foremost, wished to streamline practice by standardising the regulations concerning processing with regard to the various directives. In this way, it will be easier for citizens to know how to proceed, and the obligation of authorities to advise citizens will be more straightforward. In the Commission's proposal the modes of procedure vary slightly, and as a result it is difficult to know what one should do in any particular case. In addition, I have incorporated into the report some objectives which are pursuant to the Aarhus convention, which the Commission had either omitted from its proposal or simply forgotten. In this way the report complies better with the spirit and objectives of the convention. In particular, this applies to Item 5 of Article 6, and Article 8, of the Aarhus Convention. I would also like to thank the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Petitions for their opinions, which gave encouragement and support to my work in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. Also, cooperation with the Commission and (in particular) the Council has been constructive, and bodes well for the second stage of processing of the report.

Political group: PPE-DE