Mr President, I am forced to take a trip eleven years down memory lane since it was, in fact, in 1991 that the Council of Ministers for the Environment adopted a directive, to be discussed this evening, concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market. The aim of this directive was, firstly, to define a common evaluation procedure of active substances for both existing and new pesticides, and, secondly, to establish a positive list of authorised substances, which are deemed to be acceptable for health and the environment. A positive list means that any substance that does not feature on this list is, essentially, banned. Twelve years was chosen as the period in which to complete this considerable undertaking, which of course gives us until July 2003. In the meantime, however, the Commission was required, under Article 8, to publish a progress report on the procedure. This report was in fact published at the end of last year and this is what forms the basis of this evening’s debate. In the report, the Commission states that 31 out of the 834 active substances on the market have been evaluated, that is, less than 5%. In these conditions and as the Commission quite rightly states, it will clearly not be possible to meet the July 2003 deadline. I shall not dwell on the causes of the enormous delay placed upon us, other than to say that it must be attributed, in the main, to a lack of political will, on the part of the Commission as well as the Member States. The Member States divided between them the task of carrying out the evaluation of substances. The Commission is now proposing to extend the deadlines and inevitably, for the sake of realism, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, for which I am spokesperson this evening, must agree to this extension. Although it accepts this extension, the group’s agreement is, however, subject to strict conditions, which include adopting clear priorities for drawing up the new timeframe for the task, giving priority to substances deemed to cause problems for environmental health and drinking water and refusing to allow any degree of indulgence on this issue. Businesses that do not submit the dossier by the prescribed date shall obviously not have their dossiers evaluated, unless it appears to be easy to fulfil the requirements of the directive. Lastly, we call for a regular report on the progress made with the evaluation programme to be submitted to the European Parliament and the Council. The Commission – and this is what the Committee on the Environment desires – is also due to submit a proposal for the revision of the 1991 Directive before the end of 2003. Why do we need this particular proposal? The Commission itself is proposing this, therefore we can only support it and add what I believe to be appropriate comments. We have noted serious lapses in the process. In particular, I do not believe it is sufficient to evaluate active pesticides: we must also evaluate metabolites if necessary, in other words, the decay products, which can be more dangerous than the basic substances. The Committee on the Environment also supports the introduction of comparative assessments and of the substitution principle which will result in encouraging the emergence onto the market and the use of substances with the lowest toxicity; the more toxic substances will therefore be withdrawn. Furthermore, new criteria – there have been considerable developments in the space of ten years, and even more so in the last two – must be taken into account. These include the lack of evidence relating to endocrine disruption – back in 1991, no one spoke of endocrine disrupters but since then, this has become an important subject in environmental policy – or the specific effect on the health of children and foetuses, as well as the synergistic problems related to exposure to several pesticides. To sum up, ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to support the report by the Committee on the Environment, and I should also like to draw your attention to a particular point, namely item 14 of the resolution, which calls on the Commission to publish, before July 2003, a new proposal for a directive establishing a programme for a reduction in the use of pesticides, similar to the one introduced in some Member States. I feel that the Committee on the Environment is right to support this proposal which aims not only to bring the 1991 Directive to a successful conclusion but also to reduce the use of pesticides, which is certainly a very good way of reducing the risks.

Political group: Verts-ALE