WRITTEN QUESTION E-0546/01 by Christa Randzio-Plath (PSE) to the Commission. Working conditions of women engaged in floriculture in Africa and Latin America.
Date: 2001-02-27
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: Africa, Latin America, floriculture, international convention, international trade, pesticide, working conditions

18.4.2002

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 93 E/5

(2002/C 93 E/004)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0546/01

by Christa Randzio-Plath (PSE) to the Commission

(27 February 2001)

Subject: Working conditions of women engaged in floriculture in Africa and Latin America

In view of the fact that the EU imports cut flowers from Africa and Latin America, what possibilities
1.
does the Commission see of improving conditions for women working in floricultural centres in Africa
and Latin America in terms of health, environment, benefits and the labour regulations applicable to them?

2. What is the European Union doing to enforce in these countries also the ban on pesticides already
applicable in Europe and to support the flower label programme organised by the international human
rights organisation, FIAN?

Answer given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(11 May 2001)

1. When the system of generalised preferences (GSP) came up for renewal in 1998 the Commission
proposed a system of incentives to encourage the Andean and Central American countries to comply with
labour and environmental standards. That system would have covered the products in question. However,
despite the backing of some Member States, the Council chose not to take up the Commission’s proposal.

The Commission nevertheless remains acutely aware of the harsh working conditions in African and Latin
American floriculture and indeed throughout agriculture and industry in those regions. The GSP and the
Cotonou Agreements are going some way to improving matters on the ground, though by how much it is
still too soon to say.

2.
The licensing of pesticides in the Community is governed by Directive 91/414/EEC of 15 July 1991
concerning the placing on the market and use of plant protection products (1) and Directive 98/8/EC of the
Parliament and the Council of 16 February 1998 concerning the placing on the market of biocidal
products (2). Furthermore, Council Directives 76/769/EEC of 27 July 1976 (3) and 79/117/EEC of
21 December 1978 (4) respectively provide for the prohibition or restriction of the marketing and use in
the Community of certain biocidal products and plant protection products. Decisions under these
Directives do not apply to exported products.

Under the London Guidelines for the exchange of information on chemicals in international trade and the
International Code of Conduct on the distribution and use of pesticides, two voluntary procedures for
notifying importing (mainly developing) countries were adopted at international level in 1989. With the
adoption of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2455/92 of 23 July 1992 concerning the import and export of
certain dangerous chemicals (5), the ‘export notification’ and ‘prior informed consent’ (PIC) procedures
became mandatory for Community exporters. The first covers 39 groups of substances (totalling some 200
individual substances), while the second currently applies to 32 chemicals, 26 of them pesticides.

In 1998 the Community and 72 states signed the Rotterdam Convention, which will make the two
procedures mandatory at global level. The Convention will enter into force as soon as 50 signatories have
ratified it.

More information on the procedures and the lists of chemicals concerned can be found on the websites of
the Convention (http://www.pic.int/) and the Commission (http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/chemi-
cals/index.htm). In the course of the year the Commission intends to notify the Convention’s interim
secretariat of more pesticides recently restricted within the Community for possible inclusion in the ‘PIC’
procedure.

C 93 E/6

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

18.4.2002

This year the Commission is also planning to propose a draft decision for the ratification of the Rotterdam
Convention and amendments to bring Regulation (EEC) No 2455/92 into line with the Convention. It is
also considering including in its proposed amendments a provision banning the export of certain
chemicals already banned within the Community, for example those of most concern.

Last but not least, the Commission intends in the next few months to propose a draft decision on the
conclusion of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), which will ban or restrict
the production and/or use throughout the world of 12 POPs, eight of them pesticides already banned in
the Community.

As for how the Community could support a label of the type advocated by the environmentalist Food First
Information and Action Network (FIAN), the Commission is currently studying the general and highly
complex question of various forms of labelling.

(1) OJ L 230, 19.8.1991.
(2) OJ L 123, 29.4.1998.
(3) OJ L 262, 27.9.1976.
(4) OJ L 33, 8.2.1979.
(5) OJ L 251, 29.8.1992.

(2002/C 93 E/005)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0580/01

by Salvador Garriga Polledo (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(1 March 2001)

Subject: Television without frontiers

With the 1997 ‘Television Without Frontiers’ Directive up for review in 2002, new ideas are already
emerging on key issues that the review ought to tackle, such as promoting the distribution and production
of European television programmes.

The coproduction of television programmes involving a number of Community Member States has been
somewhat neglected, and is a leading factor in moves to enable producers to encourage collaboration
between public and private networks and actors and other professionals who routinely work together in
the making of television productions.

Will the Commission say whether television producers have held preliminary discussions with a view to
encouraging genuinely European coproductions involving television networks and producers and other
professionals from the television industry across the Community?

Answer given by Ms Reding on behalf of the Commission

(11 May 2001)

The Commission would like to draw the Honourable Member’s attention to the MEDIA and MEDIA II
Programmes and to the MEDIA Plus Programme, which started on 1 January 2001. One of the aims of the
Media Programme is to promote the distribution and production of European television programmes. The
Media Programme supports European television productions (fiction, documentaries and animated films)
involving no less than two broadcasters, and preferably more, in several Member States participating or
cooperating in the programme, belonging to different language zones. The specific objective is to promote
in the Community and outside it, of European television programmes produced by
the movement,
independent companies by encouraging cooperation between broadcasters, on the one hand, and
independent European distributors and producers, on the other hand.

During the Media II Programme (1996-2000) the Community has supported in total 353 European
television co-productions with a total financial contribution of € 39 421 400.