Archive for June, 2006

COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 12 - Conclusions of the Budapest meeting

Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

Dear All,
The COMMON FORUM meeting was -in my perception- quite successful. I wish to thank the persons who gave stimulating presentations and our Hungarian hosts for providing such a nice meeting place. You will receive a report of this meeting next month, but the main conclusions of the meeting will be given below. In the attachments to this mail you will find some news communications about the delay in publication of the Soil Framework Directive [SFDdelay.pdf] and &[fyi.doc] and the preliminary programme [http://www.nicole.org] of the NICOLE ( 10th Anniversary) workshop 4-6 october, Leuven, Belgium. All COMMON FORUM members ( and guests) are invited to this workshop. I will send the invitation and files for registration and hotel accomodation in a separate mail.
Please do not forget to check you agendas for availability for the meeting in Bilbao.
Regards
Joop

1] SOIL FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE DELAYED
COMMON FORUM hoped to have Claudia Olazabal present at the meeting in Budapest to present a published proposal for a soil framework directive and accompanying soil strategy communication. However as became clear during the meeting, after a phone call with Claudia, that the internal discussion between the services of the commission ended it up in opposing views about the contamination part of the soil framework directive, especially about inventories of contaminated sites (sites with confirmed risks due soil pollution in view of the current or approved use of the site, in other word sites that need some risk management intervention like remediation or temporary safety measures). As several versions of the draft framework directive have been leaked much of the discussions in COMMON FORUM could be focussed on concrete proposals for articles in the directive, and this gave an extra dimension to the main theme of the meeting: the contaminated land inventories.
COMMON FORUM generally felt that the discussion about the Soil Framework directive is taking place behind closed doors too long and that an open debate about published proposals is needed.

2] CONCLUSIONS OF THE COMMON FORUM MEETING 8&9 JUNE

a] Contaminated land and EU soil directive.
The discussion about contaminated land inventories and the EU soil framework directive (SFD) concluded that a COMMON FORUM discussion paper about the contamination part of the framework directive would be helpful to inspire national discussions but also discussions within the commission services. The paper will consider various possibilities for implementation of the proposed regulations, depending on the interpretation of the text of the articles of the SFD. Some interpretations may seriously interfere with current practice in contaminated land management while others may have positive effects. As much of the interpretation and implementation discussion will start after the publication of the proposal, possible negative effects can be easily mitigated after the publication. However the way the contamination part of the SFD is designed and structured at present may act as a frame for future discussions. If the frame is such that it blocks flexible cost effective and eco efficient Risk based land management approaches, no matter how it is implemented, the problems may become more fundamental and should be cured before the implementation discussion starts.
In fact there has already been a shift in ” frame”. Much of the obligations described in the proposed SFD originate from recommendations from the Working group contamination. On the one hand one could say that the directive does not contain unexpected things coming out of the blue and strictly follows the working group recommendations. On the other hand one should be aware that those recommendations were made in a different ” frame” or context. The working group made recommendations for a monitoring directive and an accompanying soil strategy, and did not anticipate that the proposals would end up in a directive. COMMON FORUM decided that the secretary should draft a paper which will be reviewed by the country representatives in COMMON FORUM. Given the delicate and politically sensitive situation the EU soil policy package is in, special attention should be given to the “tone of voice” of this document. After the draft stage and if still appropriate COMMON FORUM intends have a discussion with representatives of DG ENV and possibly DG Enterprise about the observations made in the discussion paper. Andreas Bieber (D), Sheena Engineer (UK), Harald Kasamas (AT) Victror Dries (B) and Dominique Darmendrail (FR) volunteered as members of the COMMON FORUM delegation.

b] Research and communication- Urban soils
The proposal to organize a desk study to find parties for a research consortium in the field of “urban soil ecosystem services” was accepted. Germany will take the lead in this and will look for possibilities to finance the study as a contribution to COMMON FORUM. To enhance the international character of the study it would be helpful if countries which do not contribute financially to COMMON FORUM could provide some co-financing for this project.

c] EUGRIS
After presentation about the current state of EUGRIS the d use of EUGRIS by COMMON FORUM was discussed. The discussions started already at previous meetings without definitive conclusion. This time the conclusion was reached that COMMON FORUM as an organization does not need very advanced website features but that a restricted area for COMMON FORUM members within EUGRIS could be useful.

3] NEXT COMMON FORUM MEETING
Arantzazu Urzelai confirmed that the Basque country is willing to act as a host for the next meeting, which will take place in Bilbao. The agenda committee in COMMON FORUM decided to have “State aid and contaminated land remediation” as the main theme for presentations and discussions at this meeting.
I propose to have the ( 2 days) meeting either in the week of 23-28 0ctober or 30 october - 3 november. Please inform me about your availability in this period.