Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the report on the strategy for the future chemicals policy, which we are to discuss and adopt positions on in this debate, is extremely urgent and important because it will form the basis for a draft legislative text and for new framework legislation for the EU’s chemicals policy. Gratifyingly enough, the European Council decided, at the Gothenburg Summit in June, that a new chemicals policy would have to be introduced by 2004 at the latest and that this time limit would have to be respected. The Commission must therefore table its draft legislation in the course of 2002. The debate on deficiencies in the current chemicals policy has been going on for quite some time. Among the criticisms made is the fact that there has been a lack of information about the majority of the 100 000 existing chemicals, that the work has proceeded far too slowly and that the present policy has, in practice, failed to protect human health and the environment. The Commission’s survey of the legislation on existing substances shows that human beings and the environment are potentially exposed to a large number of chemical substances whose dangerous characteristics are not known. We know that the human body contains measurable quantities of 350 chemicals. We also know that the quantity of brominated flame retardants in breast milk has been increasing each year. Even if PCB and DDT are now surrounded by tough restrictions, it remains the case that high quantities of these chemicals are still found in the fatty tissue of human beings and animals throughout the world, even in the Polar regions where these chemicals have not been produced at all. New chemicals are added to the list, for example PFOS or perfluorooctane sulfonate, which does not bind in fatty tissue but, rather, in blood protein. These chemicals are found in a number of products, for example shampoo. Through the regulation adopted by the Council in order to overcome the deficiencies, detailed risk assessments should be carried out and recommendations made as to measures, etc. which might be taken. We now know that there are only 140 chemicals on the ‘priority list’ and that risk assessments have been completed in only eleven cases. Even worse is the fact that not a single measure has been decided upon in order to reduce the risks, in spite of its having been shown that such measures are needed for the majority of these substances. The Commission’s White Paper, produced by the Environment and Enterprise Directorates-General, is trying to create a high degree of health and environmental protection, at the same time as maintaining the competitiveness of the European chemicals industry. This is done, for example, by saying that chemicals policy must stimulate technical innovation and the development of safer chemicals. In common with the majority of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, I believe that the strategy should be focused on the protection of the environment and of human health and that the point of departure for the Commission’s White Paper should be the debate in the Council and the growing unease about the fact that current chemicals policy cannot offer adequate protection of the environment and of human health. Naturally, the economic and social aspects must be accorded a fair degree of importance as parts of a strategy for sustainable development. If a majority of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy voted for a proposal that goes further than the Commission’s and shows how an effective, open and consumer-friendly control of chemicals should look in the future, that is completely in line with, and receives strong political support from, the European Council Summit in June when the conclusions drawn by the 15 Member States were significantly stricter and more far-reaching than the Commission’s proposal. There is therefore an express political will to adopt the policy for a new chemicals strategy proposed by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, above all when it comes to the scope of the REACH system. As currently desired by the industry and the Group of the European People’s Party and , only CMR 1 and 2 and POPs are to be included which, in that case, cannot be said to be much in the way of a strategy for the future. Even among industrial companies there is a desire to go further, for a competitive industry cannot be achieved through the unacceptable situation we have at present but only by producing safer chemicals and chemicals that protect human health and the environment. I therefore believe that we should stick to the compromise achieved between the various political groups and to the proposal backed by the majority.

Political group: Verts-ALE