Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the establishment of a European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register and amending Council Directives 91/689/EEC and 96/61/EC (COM(2004) 634 final — 2004/0231 (COD))
Date: 2005-04-06
Institutions: European Economic and Social Committee
Subjects: EU environmental policy, access to information, data processing, directory, international agreement, pollutant, waste management

14.10.2005

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 255/55

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council concerning the establishment of a European Pollutant
Release and Transfer Register and amending Council Directives 91/689/EEC and 96/61/EC

(COM(2004) 634 final — 2004/0231 (COD))

(2005/C 255/10)

On 4 February 2005, the Council decided to consult the European Economic and Social Committee, under
Article 175(1) of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on the abovementioned communica-
tion.

The Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment, which was responsible for preparing
the Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 17 March 2005. The rapporteur was
Ms Sánchez Miguel.

At its 416th plenary session, held on 6 and 7 April 2005 (meeting of 6 April), the European Economic and
Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 131 votes to none, with 11 abstentions.

1. Introduction

The Århus Convention (1), which recognised the right to
1.1
access to information, public participation in decision-making
and access to justice in environmental matters, marks a new
phase in the EU, with an attempt to create instruments that
provide the public and other environmental stakeholders with
the necessary means to obtain reliable information, which will
enable preventive measures to be taken and, above all, achieve
positive results in reducing environmental pollution.

1.2
Articles 5(9) and 10(2) of the Århus Convention provide
instruments facilitating public access to
for the creation of
information and public participation; registers are amongst the
most useful of these instruments, because they contain data
that are reliable and comparable with the data provided both
by businesses and by the competent authorities. It should be
noted that, in other Community policies, the use of data regis-
ters has helped to improve access to information and the legal
security of the data they contain.

instruments exist,

Specifically as regards pollutant release and transfer,
1.3
other international
in particular the Bahía
Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (2000), which
included priority actions to be implemented as of 2000 as a
means of achieving the aims that had been set; the 2001 Stock-
holm Convention on persistent organic pollutants and the
control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and
their disposal; the OECD's work (2002) on analysis of the costs
and benefits of pollutant release and transfer registers.

(1) Århus Convention on access to information, public participation in
decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters,
signed on 25 June 1998 by most EU Member States, and the propo-
sals for directives – (OJ C 117 of 30.4.2004).

1.4
However, the most important international instrument
in the field of pollutant waste and transfer registers is the UN/
ECE Protocol signed in Kiev in 2003 (2). Its main aim is to
promote information in this field by means of national registers
that contain data provided by the parties concerned and which
also help to prevent and reduce environmental pollution;
it
recommends that such registers also be established at interna-
tional level in order to make it easier to compare data held at
supra-national level.

The Kiev Protocol can be considered to be a model for
1.5
this proposed European PRTR regulation,
in particular the
content of the annexes, which help to achieve the desired aim:
to harmonise the data held in the registers, be they national,
European or international. There are two aspects, however,
which differ in the proposed regulation: the first concerns the
list of priority substances contained in the Water Framework
Directive (WFD), with the addition of new ones (3), and the
second is the recommendation to bring the entry into force
forward to 2007, so that notification in accordance with the
new procedure coincides with the final EPER report.

In addition to these international agreements, there are
1.6
the European regulations currently in force which already
for a European Pollutant Emission
contain the requirement
Register (EPER) (4) as set out
in Article 15(3) of Directive
96/61/EC (IPPC — Integrated Pollution Prevention and
Control) (5), which has been operational since 23 February
2004. To date, the first reports were submitted by Member

(2) The Protocol on pollutant release and transfer registers to the
Convention on access to information, public participation in the
decision-making process and access to justice in environmental
matters.
(Kiev, 21 May 2003) was signed at the 5th Ministerial
conference on ‘Environment for Europe’.

(3) Annexes IX and X of

the Water Framework Directive (WFD)
(Directive 2000/60/EC) set down the list of priority substances,
whilst the PRTR contained in the UN/ECE Protocol adds three new
ones and also requests information on five further substances.

(4) Commission Decision 2000/479/EC of 17 July 2000, OJ L 192 of

28.7.2000.

(5) See (OJ C 80 of 30.3.2004).

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States for data from 2001, whilst data for the second reporting
year, which covers 2004, should be submitted by Member
States by June 2006, and the third reporting year is scheduled
for 2007, to be published in 2008. It should be pointed out
that
the content of which will be expanded to
comply with the Kiev Protocol, forms a good basis for the
proposed E-PRTR.

the EPER,

2. Gist of the proposal for a regulation

The aim of the regulation is to create a Community
2.1
pollutant release and transfer register, which will enable Europe
to comply with the Kiev Protocol. To this end, it sets out an
exhaustive list of definitions of terms that may differ in several
instances from the IPPC Directive terms and it covers both the
pollutants (substances) and activities (facilities) to which the
Regulation would apply, whether they be in the public or
private sector, and arranges the information that the PRTR
(Art. 3) must contain under three headings:

— Pollutant releases, as specified in Article 5(a) from activities

listed in Annex I

— Off-site transfers of waste and untreated waste water, as set
from activities listed in

in Articles 5(1)(b) and (c)

out
Annex I

— The release of pollutants from diffuse sources.

The structure of the E-PRTR (Art. 4(1)) is based on the
2.2
mandatory reporting of data by businesses which, because of
their sphere of activity, specifically those set out in Annex I,
have their substances and waste monitored in accordance with
the European regulations in force.
these substances are
measured, calculated or estimated for reporting purposes, the
method of analysis or calculation must be stated, with reference
to the values set out in Annex II.

If

2.3
The data reporting will be undertaken in the Member
States and conveyed to the Commission electronically, keeping
to the timetables set out in Article 7 (the first reporting year
will be 2007). Data will be reported in two sections — one
dealing with releases to land (Art. 6) and the other dealing with
releases from diffuse sources (Art. 8).

how up-to-date they are and as regards their completeness,
reliability, comparability and transparency;

— ease of public access to the information contained in the
registers, assured by the Commission, with the European
Environment Agency providing assistance with this task;

— the confidentiality that will be applied to data that compa-
nies have classified as confidential, taking account, for this
purpose, of
the provisions of Article 4 of Directive
2003/4/EC.

2.5
Other rules contained in the E-PRTR Regulation refer to
public participation (Art. 12) and access to justice (Art. 13), as
recognised in the Århus Convention and in Directive
2003/4/EC. The Commission must
establish appropriate
arrangements for this, and issue periodical reports providing
information on the outcome of such public participation (Art.
12(2)).

2.6 Member States will have to provide additional informa-
tion every three years (Art. 16), once the regulation has entered
into force, assessing practices in their countries and compliance
with mandatory data reporting by the companies concerned.
Furthermore, they will have to set effective, proportionate and
dissuasive sanctions that will apply in the event of non-compli-
ance with the requirements (Art. 20).

Lastly, the Commission will be assisted by a Committee,

2.7
as set out in Decision 1999/468/EC (Art. 19).

3. General comments

3.1
The EESC can, in principle, accept the aim of a Euro-
pean Pollutant Release and Transfer Register that is in line with
the international agreements signed by the European Com-
munity and thus replaces the current EPER, especially since this
does not entail further obligations for the parties concerned
than under current Community legislation. Harmonising data
collection and information reporting will ensure the quality
and comparability of such information and will thus make it
more effective and, above all, more accessible.

2.4
The necessary rules have been drawn up with great care
to ensure that the content of the register meets the require-
ments of all public information systems, in terms of:

— the quality of

the data, which will be assured by the
operator and assessed by the competent authorities as to

3.2
The legal base adopted by the Commission for this
proposal for a regulation is Article 174(1) in conjunction with
Article 300 of the EC Treaty, which authorises it to propose
rules for compliance with international agreements that the EC
signs with international organisations. In this case, the agree-
ments in question are not only to protect the environment
against pollution, but also to facilitate information, public parti-
cipation and access to justice.

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3.2.1
The Commission looked at various options for imple-
menting the UN-ECE Protocol; firstly, it studied the possibility
of reforming the current EPER without proposing a new regu-
lation but, given the need to reform the IPPC Directive anyway,
not only this time but each time that changes are made to the
Kiev Protocol, which is the basis of this proposal, it deemed it
more appropriate to propose a new legislative instrument so as
to avoid further legal uncertainty amongst the parties affected
by these continuous reforms. For this reason and on the basis
of Article 175(1) TEC, this draft regulation was submitted as
the legislative instrument best suited to meet the requirements
for the harmonised implementation of the international agree-
ments.

The upshot is that all Member States will implement
3.2.2
the Kiev Protocol by means of a Community law that will also
guarantee that the Protocol's content is consistent with current
Community legislation in this field and that it will apply to all
Member States immediately, and not have to wait until the
Protocol is ratified at a later date, upholding the common posi-
tion adopted by national representatives when they negotiated
and signed the Protocol.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the current
3.3
situation in the Member States,
including those that have
recently joined the EU, varies considerably in the degree to
which they comply with the obligations imposed by the EPER,
ranging from some countries such as the United Kingdom
which have a broader register to others such as Hungary which
was asking voluntarily to be part of the scheme even before
joining the EU. There are also differences in the degree of
compliance by the parties concerned: whereas major corpora-
tions and industrial groups and facilities under the IPPC Direc-
tive comply fully,
(even producing annual environmental
reports), SMEs, small operators outside the IPPC and some local
authorities — provided they operate municipal waste water
treatment plants — lack the means to be able to comply with
all the bureaucracy that this obligation entails.

3.4
The EESC considers that the approach, in terms of both
access to information and public participation, is correct and
fulfils the aims set out in Directive 2003/4/EC. Furthermore, it
is satisfied with the obligation to inform the public on the
outcome of its participation so that this participation can be
assessed. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that, in order to
provide Internet access to the greatest possible number of
people, the number of languages used for consultation would
have to be increased to cover all the official languages.

3.5
An extremely important issue — the economic impact
— appears to have been thoroughly evaluated by the Commis-
sion (6) which concluded that, since the Member States and
parties concerned were already obliged to implement the EPER

(6) See the document: Analysis of

the Cost and Benefits of PRTRs
produced by the Economic Analysis Division in 2002. CEP/WG.5/
AC.2/2002/4.

and thus to report all the data it required, the costs would only
apply to new arrangements between the Commission and
Member States for the transfer of the stored data; the Commis-
sion will have to bear the brunt of the costs, especially for
setting up and maintaining the web page, with each Member
State thus having to pay only a very small part. Nevertheless, it
is also important to mention that, for operators outside of the
IPPC Directive, monitoring and reporting of their releases and
transfers form a new cost item and administrative burden.

4. Specific comments

4.1
The EESC considers that the PRTR Regulation will result
in a marked improvement to the approach initiated by the
EPER;
firstly, because it ensures that more information is
provided on releases to air and water by including releases to
land and releases from diffuse sources and also because it
adapts EU legislation to international legislation, with particular
reference to the Århus Convention and more specifically, to the
Kiev UN-ECE Convention.

4.2
Nevertheless, the EESC wishes to state that the current
EPER must be consolidated in order to make it as easy as
possible for the parties concerned to comply with the reporting
obligation, as set out in the new provisions. The PRTR's sched-
uled entry into force (2007, although it will not be operational
until 2009) will allow time to supplement and correct the
current register and to gradually incorporate the new reports
and the parties newly required to report. Finalising the EPER's
content and publishing it on the web page will cut costs and,
above all, prevent confusion arising between current informa-
tion and new information.

As regards the inclusion of more new pollutants to be
4.3
reported (a further 36 with the UN-ECE Protocol),
two
comments should be made: a) many of them are pesticides no
longer used or marketed in the EU and b) the obligation to
report is tied to compliance with the reporting thresholds set
out in Annex I for activities and in Annex II for pollutants.

4.4
The EESC believes it would be advisable to standardise
as far as possible the content of the reports to be submitted by
the parties concerned (Annex III) and to simplify reporting for
SMEs and farmers, so as not to impose further bureaucracy and
expense on those concerned. For this reason and in order to
ensure that the data contained in the registers are comparable,
the best technology available should be used for determining
the annual quantities. Consistency between the various national
registers and the European register is another requirement for
ensuring that these are standardised and comparable with one
another.

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the parties concerned, and provided that

4.5
The EESC is particularly sensitive to the confidentiality
of data that must be included in the reports by the parties
concerned. As set out in Article 11, it is the Member States
that will decide on keeping any given data confidential, at the
request of
they
comply with the exceptions set out in Article 4 of Directive
2003/4/EC, although the last sentence states that the reasons for
the refusal shall be given, whereas Recital 14 of the proposed
regulation states that Access to information provided by the Euro-
pean PRTR should be unrestricted and exceptions from this rule
should only be possible where explicitly granted by existing Com-
munity legislation. This difference between the two provisions
must be resolved because, as set out in the last sentence of
Article 11, those parties who wish certain data to remain confi-
dential have to justify their request, otherwise it could lead to
the false assumption that these data are not covered by Article 4
of Directive 2003/4/EC because, if they are regulated by a legal
provision, there is no need to give a reason.

4.6
The EESC appreciates the efforts made in the E-PRTR
proposal to put the reported data into their proper context and
to gradually reduce potential risks of misinterpretation of such
data. Further improvements in this direction would be sincerely
appreciated.

5. Conclusions

In conclusion, transparency in the notification of emissions and
the transfer of pollutants, in the form proposed in the E-PRTR,
by the parties concerned, i.e., businesses, farmers and public
authorities, can be said to perform a two-fold task:

— to publicise, within the internal market, the environmental
practices of all those parties and their compliance with the
relevant European legislation, so that competitors, consu-
mers and citizens can easily assess these practices and act
accordingly;

— to bring added value to the competitiveness of European
companies, whatever their activity, in both European and
international markets, and provided that data remains stan-
dardised and comparable, as set out in ‘Specific comments’.
The Section considers that the transparent information that
the E-PRTR can provide will help to strengthen common
positions on voluntary agreements by production sectors,
will make it easier to comply with environmental legislation
and,
through the publicity provided by the registers
improve public knowledge on local facilities, enhance the
Corporate Social Responsibility concept amongst operators
and facilitate trust building amongst civil society actors.

Brussels, 6 April 2005

The President

of the European Economic and Social Committee

Anne-Marie SIGMUND