WRITTEN QUESTION E-3579/96 by Cristiana Muscardini (NI) to the Commission (17 December 1996)

Subject: Dangerous pollution of Europe's seas

According to estimates by the WHO (World Health Organization), a quarter of the total number of visitors to seaside resorts (some 100 million people), who choose to spend their holidays on the coasts of Europe, contract infections of different types, which are often very serious, despite taking standard, simple precautions (such as not eating raw shellfish, not bathing near sewage or industrial waste outlets, etc.).

Our seas are now so polluted that fish, their natural inhabitants, are dying. Species that adapt in order to survive very often form an important link in the human food chain and are a source of danger to those who eat them.

A major conference was recently held in Marseilles, at the beginning of October 1996, to discuss a list of often fatal toxins, including solvents containing chlorine, pesticides, DDT, dioxins, hydrocarbons, etc.

Will the Commission: intervene to ensure that the Member States obey the rules and stop these continual discharges of dangerous toxins? Ensure that, in future, sewage plants, which have been installed in a number of tourist areas, are built to cater not for the number of inhabitants, as they are at present, but for the numbers of tourists visiting the area, which, at high season, often swell the permanent population to three times its normal size, a population which the sewage facilities are totally inadequate to cope with?

Answer given by Mrs Bjerregaard on behalf of the Commission (21 January 1997)

The bathing water Directive (Council Directive 76/160/EEC) ((OJ L 31, 5.2.1976. )) defines bathing waters as all waters in which bathing is either explicity authorized or not prohibited and traditionally practised by a large number of bathers. It sets water quality standards (physical, chemical and microbiological parameters) for all bathing waters, and obliges Member States to respect these standards, to monitor the quality of their bathing waters and to report the results of their monitoring to the Commission. Each year, the Commission publishes a comprehensive report on the quality of bathing water.

The urban water treatment Directive (Council Directive 91/271/EEC) ((OJ L 135, 30.5.1991. )) requires waste water collection systems and waste water treatment in all agglomerations above a certain size (2 000 population equivalents for discharges to fresh waters, 10 000 population equivalents for discharges to marine waters; population equivalent is a widely used measurement unit for the pollution of waste water, equal to the pollution load of one person per day). The Directive sets requirements for emission limit values for the treatment plants. The deadlines for achieving these objectives are 31 December 1998, 31 December 2000 or 31 December 2005, depending on the size of the agglomeration and the character of the affected water body. The Directive specifies that in deciding the size of a waste water treatment plant the pollution load shall basically be calculated on the basis of the maximum average weekly load entering the treatment plant during the year. Therefore the size of a treatment plant will have to be based on the resident population plus other sources of waste water such as industry. In the case of a tourists constituting up to three times the resident population (as mentioned in the question), a design for a treatment plant based only on resident population would not be in conformity with the Directive.

The Commission is, in its role as guardian of the Treaty, constantly supervising the proper transposition and implementation of Community legislation, and opens infringement procedures where necessary.