WRITTEN QUESTION E-1946/01 by Jonas Sjöstedt (GUE/NGL) to the Commission. Environmental devastation in Yugoslavia following NATO bombardment.
Date: 2001-07-03
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: NATO, UNO, Yugoslavia, access to information, action programme, health risk, nuclear weapon, pollution, public health

14.2.2002

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 40 E/147

(2002/C 40 E/156)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1946/01

by Jonas Sj(cid:246)stedt (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(3 July 2001)

Subject: Environmental devastation in Yugoslavia following NATO bombardment

Interest in the events in Yugoslavia has waned but there is every reason to raise the issue of the
environmental devastation directly caused by NATO bombing. There has been some discussion of depleted
uranium ammunition and its harmful effects, mainly on KFOR soldiers serving in Kosovo and Bosnia, but
the fate of the permanently resident population has not attracted the same sort of attention.

In its issue No 5/2001, the newspaper Die Zeit reports that the United Nations Environment programme
(UNEP) has made studies of the environmental pollution caused by the NATO bombing of the oil refinery
and other chemical
installations in the town of Pancevo and considers that that pollution was more
dangerous than the pollution produced by depleted uranium. According to the UNEP(cid:146)s investigations,
80 000 tonnes of oil and oil products were destroyed by fire during the bombing of the refinery in
Pancevo alone. The attack released aromatic hydrocarbons, which cause cancer and genetic damage in
humans.

Die Zeit also reports that a bombed petrochemical factory discharged 2 100 tonnes of ethylene dichloride
into the soil and water. The limit value for ethylene dichloride in one litre of drinking water is one
microgram, whereas the UNEP team measured 5 960 micrograms in one litre of water in Pancevo! The
reading in the Danube is a concentration of 65 micrograms per litre and high readings have also been
recorded in groundwater. At the Pancevo refinery, 460 tonnes of vinyl chloride, which is carcinogenic, was
also destroyed by fire and a major health risk is posed by a leakage of 8 tonnes of mercury.

NATO bombed not only the refinery, the petrochemical factory and the fertiliser factory in the town but
also the industrial sewage treatment plant.

Is the Commission aware of the above problems and what does it propose by way of a remedy?

Answer given by Mrs Wallstr(cid:246)m on behalf of the Commission

(3 September 2001)

The Commission assumes that the article refers to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Balkans Task Force Report on the environmental consequences of the Kosovo conflict that was published
in October 1999. This report has received extensive media attention. It identified Pancevo as one of a
number of environmental
(cid:145)hot-spots(cid:146) where bombing added to the existing environmental situation
resulting from poor industrial standards. UNEP made a statement on the follow-up to this report at the
recent Donors(cid:146) Conference for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia organised by the European Commission
and the World Bank, in Brussels on 29 June 2001. Full details of the Conference are available at the
website of the Joint Office of the European Commission and the World Bank (www.seerecon.org). In this
statement (available at www.unep.org), UNEP reported that it was fully involved in clean-up operations in
the cities of Novi Sad, Pancevo, Kragujevac and Bor. The Commission, which is supporting many other
priorities and projects in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is not financing these operations, which are
being funded by other, bilateral, donors.

(2002/C 40 E/157)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1951/01

by Johannes Swoboda (PSE) to the Commission

(3 July 2001)

Subject: Alpine Convention

Why is the Commission no longer participating in meetings of the standing committee and the Alpine
Conference set up by the Alpine Convention?