WRITTEN QUESTION E-0873/01

by Ilda Figueiredo (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(22 March 2001)

Subject: Incineration of hazardous industrial waste at the Outão cement works in the Arrábida Nature Park

People living in the Setúbal area have lodged a protest with the Commission against the Portuguese Government's intention of setting up a toxic and hazardous waste coincineration plant at the Outão cement works in the Arrábida Nature Park (Complaint No 98/5064).

The site concerned is a protected area and of outstanding interest from the historical, landscape, cultural, social, and tourism point of view.

According to the signatories sponsoring the protest, an environmental impact assessment has never been encouraged, a failure which infringes Directives 85/337/EEC(1) and 97/11/EC(2).

The Portuguese Government considers an environmental impact assessment by the private company to be sufficient. The cement industry consortium (Scoreco) has submitted such an assessment, thus ruling out an environmental impact assessment backed and monitored by bodies whose interests might be affected, despite the fact that the latter form of assessment is required in the light of the correct interpretation of the above Community directives. Portugal, moreover, has recently accepted that interpretation by issuing Order in Council No 74/2001 of 26 February 2001, repealing Article 46(3) of Order in Council No 69/2000 of 3 May 2000, which was based on a narrow interpretation of the directives.

What attitude is the Commission taking to the complaint referred to above (incineration of hazardous industrial waste at the Outão cement works in the Arrábida Nature Park)?

(1) OJ L 175, 5.7.1985, p. 40.

(2) OJ L 73, 14.3.1997, p. 5.

Answer given by Mrs Wallström on behalf of the Commission

(10 May 2001)

The Honourable Member is referring to complaint 98/5064 presented by a group of citizens in response to the plan to set up a hazardous waste coincineration plant at the Outão cement works in the Arrábida national park. As the Honourable Member points out, the complainants maintain that the project was not made subject to an environmental impact assessment and that this infringes the provisions of Council Directive 85/337/EEC of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment, as amended by Council Directive 97/11/EC of 3 March 1997.

As explained to the complainants when the complaint was being investigated and, more recently, in an additional reply to the petition they presented to Parliament (petition No 1072/98), the Commission, having examined all aspects of the project, does not consider that it contravenes the applicable provisions of Directive 85/337/EEC, nor those of Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora(1).

Although, as pointed out in the written question, the impact studies were done by a company chosen by the developer Scoreco, this does not mean they did not meet the requirements of Directive 85/337/EEC. The Directive does not in fact state that impact studies cannot be commissioned by a project's promoter. On the contrary, under Article 5 it is for the developer to transmit the information required for assessment, including information on the effects the project is likely to have on the environment, the measures envisaged to minimise these effects and a non-technical summary of this information.

With regard to the allegations in the written question on Decree-Law 74/2001, which repealed the provision of Decree-Law 69/2000 excluding from its application projects for which the impact studies had been submitted to the competent authority before its entry into force, we would point out that these texts transpose Directive 97/11/EC into Portuguese law and that the said Directive is not applicable to the project in question.

Under Article 3(2) of Directive 97/11/EC, projects for which a request for consent is submitted to a competent authority before 14 March 1999 shall be governed by the provisions of Directive 85/337/EEC prior to the amendments, not the amended version. The project in question was submitted to the competent authority before 14 March 1999.

(1) OJ L 206, 22.7.1992.