Thank you, Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing especial thanks to our rapporteur, Mr Manders, who has been right behind this directive in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market and has endeavoured to unite the various views on the directive’s scope into compromises that all the groups can support. So, once again, my warm thanks to him for that. Over 300 000 of the European Union’s industrial sites are contaminated, and so it is vital and right that this directive should be adopted, thereby achieving a substantial advance in the protection of the environment. Let me emphasise, on behalf of my group, that, although we support this directive, we argued strongly, as early as first reading, in favour of keeping a sense of proportion when dealing with this directive, for the best is sometimes the enemy of the good. What is good, in our view, is the consensus arrived at in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. What is beyond doubt is that those who cause damage to the environment in the course of their business have to accept responsibility for it. No attempt is made to interfere with the ‘polluter pays’ principle. If you can be shown to have caused damage, then you are liable for it. With this directive, once enacted, we will be breaking new ground in effectively protecting the environment in Europe. In none of the Member States so far has compensation been payable in respect of simple interference with flora and fauna. This directive changes this, and that is what is new about it. For the first time, compensation becomes payable in respect of damage to protected species and their habitats, too. Whilst we stand by this, I have to again emphasise the need for us to keep a sense of proportion as we prepare to take this step, for there is as yet little reliable data that would make it possible to assess purely ecological damage and to calculate what should be paid for it. Let me consider a few individual points that gave rise to controversy in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. Firstly, what are the consequences if an enterprise, in doing its work, remains within the framework of the authorisation given to it? The ‘polluter pays’ principle applies; enterprises that damage the environment must accept liability for doing so. I do think, though, that fairness requires that those who remain within the framework of the authorisation given to them should be able to have the confidence that the authorities will make allowance for this if damage is actually found to have been done. The second point at issue is mandatory insurance against damage covered by the directive. I do not think it right to bring in mandatory insurance for environmental damage until such time as reliable data become available. Efforts must be made to obtain this data. The directive helps to do that, in that, for the first time, it imposes a duty to compensate in respect of damage that is done to the environment alone, but businesses, and, in consequence, the insurance industry too, must have time to devise insurance schemes that are affordable and the premiums for which are capable of being calculated. The Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market wants that time to be made available to them. In practical terms, that means that our group opposes the introduction of mandatory insurance with immediate effect from the enactment of the directive. The last point I would like to address has to do with farmers and foresters. If the directive is not clarified appropriately, farmers and foresters will be particularly hard hit by its provisions. Farmers live with nature and make their living from it. It follows, then, that they should be excluded from the scope of the directive if they maintain best agricultural practice in the course of their activities. To frame the directive in these terms is not to give farmers and foresters carte blanche. ‘Best practice’ is a recognised concept in national and European law, one that the Commission has only recently defined, and it gives expression to an accepted standard. Let me conclude by summing up our group’s thinking. We want the directive passed into law so that it can improve, in the long term, the protection of the environment in the European Union, but let us not make the mistake of being led by good intentions to attempt the second step before we have taken the first.

Political group: PPE-DE