Mr President, persistent organic pollutants – POPs – are chemical substances that persist in the environment, accumulate through the food chain and pose a risk to human health and the environment. As these substances accumulate in fatty tissue in animals – including humans – by definition some of us are more at risk than others! These pollutants are atmospherically transported across international boundaries, far from their sources, even to regions where they have never been used or produced. The ecosystems and indigenous people of the Arctic are particularly at risk because of the long-range environmental transportation and biomagnification of these substances. They are largely man-made toxic pollutants produced by and used in a variety of industrial sources, for example, as agricultural pesticides, in wood preservation and industrial chemicals. POPs include pesticides such as aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, myrex and toxaphene; industrial chemicals such as PCBs and hexachlorophine; and unwanted by-products of combustion and industrial processes, such as dioxins and furans. Considerable controls already exist within EU policy and relevant directives such as the WEEE Directive, the RoH Directive, the Water Framework Directive, the Seveso Directive and various hazardous waste directives. The proposed regulation before us aims to tidy up existing legislation on the marketing and use restrictions on eight POP pesticides and to make a slight amendment to the PCB Disposal Directive. These measures will make it easier for states, as parties to the Protocol to the Aarhus Convention, and particularly the Stockholm Convention, to ratify both these international agreements. 48 countries have already ratified the Stockholm Convention, including 8 Member States and 2 accession countries. Ireland has yet to ratify. The overall compromise package for this first reading agreement with the European Parliament was approved at Coreper on 13 February, and then by all political groups. I understand that no further amendments have been tabled. I congratulate Mrs Frahm on the work she has done together with the Irish presidency and the Italian presidency which preceded it. The proposed regulation is a temporary measure because in the medium term these substances will be covered by the REACH Proposal. POPs waste, like all hazardous waste in my own country, Ireland, is exported mainly to Germany. Germany has substantial involvement in storing POPs waste in salt mines without any processing. It imports POPs waste commercially for disposal in this way. To facilitate these operations it has sought provision to allow continuation of this practice, which I fully support. The issue of the disposal of POPs-contaminated waste has been at the centre of the difficulties in finding a compromise. There has been much dispute about the methods of disposal: incineration, burial in deep storage in rock or in salt mines and landfill, to name but a few. Under the requirements of the Stockholm Convention there are two principal methods for the treatment of POPs waste, namely destruction or irreversible transformation. Under this regulation there are options for the management of low content POPs waste under the provisions of the Waste Framework Directive. A third option, which applies to POPs waste generally, has also been agreed upon in negotiations between Parliament and the Council. In cases where destruction or irreversible transformation is not the environmentally preferred option, POPs waste can be stored. This storage can take place in disused salt mines, deep rock formations and hazardous landfill sites. All three forms of storage are carefully defined in existing EU legislation.

Political group: PPE-DE