COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 13
By Joop | August 9, 2006
Dear All,
Please may I have your attention for two important issues:
1] The next COMMON FORUM meeting
2] The draft discussion paper about the proposal for a EU Soil framework directive.
1] NEXT COMMON FORUM MEETING
As decided in our last meeting in Budapest our next meeting will be hosted by the Basque country, in Bilbao. The COMMON FORUM agenda committee agreed on having ” funding of contaminated land remediation and EU guidelines on State aid” as the main theme of the meeting. The format of the meeting will be the same as in Budapest, which means that the main theme will be introduced by some presentations. Subsequently, an in depth discussion will take place in smaller groups. I propose to have a single short general presentation on guidelines for state and a number of smaller presentations by country representatives about their national experiences. Based on the presentations we will set up an agenda for the group discussions, which may lead to some further developments like written COMMON FORUM statements, opinion papers, discussion papers or other actions that can serve our goal.
In view of the organisation of the main theme of the meeting ( if you agree with the general outline above) I have the following questions:
A) Volunteers for small “country” presentations on ” state aid problems and solutions”
B) Should we invite someone from the Commission to present the current ideas about application of state aid guidelines in contaminated land remediation funding ? Or can we provide the general information ourselves ( for instance by the secretariat)
The choice of dates for our meeting in Bilbao is narrowing down to 26 & 27 October or 2&3 November ( both are thursday and fridays). This leads to my third question:
C) Please let me know your preference - TILL AUGUST 31- if you did not do already.
2] DRAFT DISCUSSION PAPER ON SFD
In my mail dating July 6 I sent you a quite lengthy draft discussion paper with comments on the contamination chapter from a leaked draft proposal for a Soil Framework Directive. As you may know the acceptance of the proposal, which is still an internal document for the services of the commission, is being “blocked” by some of the commissioners . The controversy seems to be centered around the proposals EU wide obligations to deal with contaminated sites. In the COMMON FORUM meeting in Budapest we decided to make draft discussion paper on the contamination part of the proposed directive as far as we know it from leaked documents. We of course realized that we may not have access to the most recent version of the proposal but we expected that more recent versions would not be fundamentally different. An analysis of the possible positive and and negative consequences could still be useful for the following reasons:
- Future discussions about interpretation and implementation of the proposed Soil Directive
- To prepare national discussions with stakeholders which were in possession of leaked documents at an earlier stage.
- To share opinions about advantages and disadvantages of the obligations in the directive.
- To assess the way the directive structures the process of assessing the contaminated land problem and the choice of solutions, including public information and public consultation.
COMMON FORUM also hoped that a discussion paper based on the experience of it’s members how to design contaminated land policies could somehow play a role in the “deblocking” of the internal discussion between de commissions services. However the members of the soil team of DG -ENV made it very clear that this COMMON FORUM initiative could not contribute in any way to the discussion. They also were quite unhappy about the timing and with the -in their view- many misinterpretations of one of the many versions of the draft proposals. In view of this I propose not to continue with the drafting of the discussion paper till the official publication of a proposal by the commission. I thank those of you who reacted on the draft and in some cases provided additional comments. Concerning the future of the draft discussion paper I have 2 questions:
A) Do you agree to postpone further drafting activities
B) Please send me additional reactions on the draft, I need to know whether the paper is clear and how much support there is for my draft comments. General comments on the draft (negative or positive) are also useful, even if we decide to wait with further drafting till the publication of the commission proposals.
Recently thirteen countries (Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Slovakia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Poland, Spain, Czech republic, Luxembourg and Portugal) have signed a letter to Commissioner Dimas to speed up the publication of the soil strategy proposals. I do hope that this will help to speed up the decision making in Brussels so that we can have a debate in public again.
Best regards,
Joop Vegter
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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 12 - Conclusions of the Budapest meeting
By Joop | June 20, 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.
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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 11
By Joop | May 30, 2006
Dear All,
Please find the agenda for the meeting in Budapest attached to this mail[CFagendafinal.doc]. There are some changes compared to the draft agenda, the most important one is that we are going on a field trip to visit an Hungarian remediation project immediately after the end of the first meeting day. Immediately after the visit we will go to the restaurant to enjoy dinner. So there is no time ( exept in emergency situations) to go to your hotel between the meeting and the dinner unless you want to skip the field trip.
For those arriving on wednesday 7 there will be a welcome get together in the Belgian Beer place near the Hungarian Environment ministry.
Regards,
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Meeting Agenda
By Joop | May 27, 2006
COMMON FORUM:
Next meeting: 28-29 februari 2008 Rotterdam, the Netherlands
MEETING PROGRAMME
Wednesday 27 Februari:
17.30: Get together ( drinks and snacks) in Bilderberg Parkhotel. Some dinnersuggestions will be provided.
Thurday 28 Februari:
10.00 COMMON FORUM meeting in Bilderberg Parkhotel.
16.30 Field trip
19.00 Drinks and snacks on the EUROMAST tower
20.00 till 22.00 Buffet dinner at the EUROMAST
Friday 29 Februari
9.00 COMMON FORUM meeting in Bilderberg Parkhotel.
15.00 End of meeting
AGENDA
Day one:
10:00 Opening and general matters
-three 20 min presentations concerning national policies
Coffee/tea break : 11:30- 12:00
-three 20 min. presentations concerning national policies
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Group discussions
Coffee/tea break : 14:00-15:30
15:30- 16: 00 New policy approaches for groundwater contamination
16:30 Introduction to field trip and departure to field trip ( drinks and dinner will be “integrated” in the field trip)
Day 2
9:00: Review of the results of the discussion on day one, plenary discussion
9:30 Soil framework directive, current situation and need for further COMMON FORUM initiatives
Coffee/tea break : 10:30- 11:00
11:00- 12:00 Continuation of SFD discussion or about other issues and concerns like IPPC
Lunch 12:00-13:00
13:00 - 14: 00 discussion about the continuation of the COMMON FORUM secretariat, including financial aspects.
14:00 -15:00 Any other business (next meetings, next topics, research news)
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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR 10
By Joop | May 22, 2006
Dear All,
Please find attached a draft meeting agenda [CFagenda.doc]. The meeting location is Budapest, Fő utca 44-50. This is the address of the Ministry of Environment and Water. The meeting room will be on the 7nd floor. The Ministry is on the Buda side of the Danube-bank near the “Batthyany” square where you can find an underground connection, from here two minutes walk to the Ministry.
I have the following questions:
1] Do you have comments/ suggestions concerning the meeting agenda
2] Could you please confirm your presence or absence at the meeting in Budapest THIS WEEK
Best regards,
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Welcome to COMMON FORUM
By Joop | April 30, 2006
The network of contaminated land policy makers and advisors from national ministries in EU memberstates and EFTA countries.
COMMON FORUM has adopted the following mission statement:
- being a platform for exchange of knowledge and experiences,
- establishing a discussion platform on policy, research, technical and managerial concepts of contaminated land,
- being a platform for initiating and following-up of international projects among members,
- offering an exchange of expertise to the European Commission and to European networks.
COMMON FORUM Secretariat:
Dr. Joop J. Vegter, Amsteldijk Zuid 167, 1189VM Amstelveen, The Netherlands.
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Members & Guests
By Joop | April 30, 2006
MEMBERS
AUSTRIA Harald Kasamas, Martin Schamann
BELGIUM Eddy van Dyck, Victor Dries, Henri Halen, Jean-Pierre Janssens
CYPRUS Antonius Charalambides
DENMARK Irene Edelgard
ESTONIA
FINLAND Anna-Maija Pajukallio
FRANCE Jan-Luc Perrin, Dominique Darmendrail
GERMANY Andreas Bieber, Annett Weiland, Joerg Frauenstein
GREECE Fotini Boura
HUNGARY Gabor Hasznos, László Ádám
IRELAND John ‘O Neill, Brendan O’Neill, Margaret Keagan
ITALY Francesca Quercia
LATVIA Evisa Abolina
LITUANIA Kestudis Kadunas
LUXEMBOURG Sophie Capus
MALTA
NETHERLANDS Co Molenaar, Margot Meijer
NORWAY Erik Høygaard, Silje Aksnes Bratland
POLAND Barbara Gvorek
PORTUGAL
SLOVAKIA
SLOVENIA Branko Druzina
SPAIN Juan Martínez Sánchez, Ines Iribarren, Eduard Marquez i Bagallo
SWEDEN Erika Borjesson
SWITSERLAND Christoph Wenger
TSJECHIA Pavla Kacabova
UNITED KINGDOM Shenah Engineer, Tom Coles
GUESTS
EU DG-ENV Claudia Olazabal
EU EEA Anna Rita Gentile
EU JRC Claudio Carlon
CABERNET Paul Nathanail
NICOLE Anja Sinke, Paul Bardos
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About Common Forum
By Joop | April 27, 2006
The COMMON FORUM on Contaminated Land was initiated in Bonn 1994. It started as an informal group of those from national government and agencies in EU Member States who are involved with contaminated land and groundwater issues. In 1996 COMMON FORUM gained a more formal status as initiators of the EU funded CARACAS concerted action on risk assessment for contaminated land. COMMON FORUM was the group of formal country representatives in CARACAS, and this situation continued during the subsequent CLARINET concerted action, which ended in 2001.The publication of the CLARINET reports introducing “Risk based land management” as a central concept in European contaminated land approaches illustrates that EU wide harmonisation can arise if all stakeholders realise the benefits of this, without being forced to do so by a EU directive. COMMON FORUM is now recognised by the EC as an important “stakeholder network” in the development of a EU soil protection policy. It is also recognised by the industry lead contaminated land network NICOLE (Network of Industrially Contaminated Land in Europe) as representing the European regulatory and policymaking community. After the end of CLARINET, COMMON FORUM wanted to keep it’s central position in the soil protection and contaminated land discussion, and succeeded due to the enthusiasm of it’s members. The need for more continuity was growing, as expressed during all meetings since 2001, for many actions to take place between meetings, and for more effective engagement with bodies like the European Commission.
The general objectives of COMMON FORUM are to develop strategies for the management and treatment of contaminated sites and for land recycling with respect to “sustainable resource protection” for contaminated land and groundwater. COMMON FORUM holds regular meetings to discuss important and current issues in these fields. When possible, common views are developed and expertise is offered to the European Commission, relevant stakeholder networks and EU research projects. Many COMMON FORUM members participate in stakeholder groups in EU research projects or participate in discussions at workshops where results of EU projects are presented.
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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 9
By Joop | April 21, 2006
Dear All
In a recent visit to Brussels I had a talk whith Claudia Olazabal, member of the soil team of DGENV. Her expectations were that the Soil strategy communication and the proposal for a Soil framework directive could be published in May 2006. There were some internal discussions within the commission causing delays but these problems are likely to be solved. She also pointed out that the text of the proposed directive has changed significantly due to input from the legal sevices from the commission. So if everything is on schedule we will be able to discuss the proposals of the commission in the COMMON FORUM meeting in Budapest in June.
After publication the EU soil policy discussion will enter a next phase. For this phase COMMON FORUM is considered by the commission as a valuable platform for consultation concerning soil contamination. It is important that we continue our activities and try to find new members so that we can “cover ” EU 25 if possible. I am currently trying to get contact with colleagues from the EU memberstates missing in COMMON FORUM.
*Please note that I will be away from 24/04 till 14/05 and my not reply immediately to emails. On 11 and 12 May I will be in Carcassonne to attend the NICOLE workshop.*
1] COMMONFORUM.EU
During the recent rush on EU internet domain names I managed to get a registration for Commonforum.eu
I will use this domain to create a small website for COMMON FORUM communication ( who is who, members and guests, common forum news, ect). I will inform you as soon as the site is operational.
2] COMMON FORUM MEETING IN BUDAPEST 8&9 JUNE
If the commission indeed publishes the proposal we will have Claudia Olazabal at the meeting to present and explain the proposals. Together with the discussion about ” national inventories of contaminated sites” this will be a quite interesting and heavy agenda. The Dutch consultant Frans Mulder who produced the report about the methodology underlying the Dutch inventory will present this work at our meeting, as a start for an in depth COMMON FORUM discussion. He also presented this work at DGENV in Brussel and this was a big success and raised many discussion points.
The COMMON FORUM meeting will take place in Budapest, Fő utca 44-50. This is the address of the Ministry of Environment and Water. The meeting room will be on the 7nd floor and there will be two smaller rooms on afternoon of june 8th for group discussions. The Ministry is on the Buda side of the Danube-bank neer the “Batthyany” square. Gabor Haznos will provide us with additional information about travel and hotels.
You will receive the final meeting agenda in the third week of May
3] A QUESTION FROM NICOLE
Our industrial sister network NICOLE is ( of course) very interested in the way the EU liability directive will be implemented in EU memberstates. The EU Liability Directive is now in force and needs to be implemented on country level before April 2007.
The NICOLE members do not have a clear picture what the status is of the implementation per country.
Would the common forum members be able to indicate:
-What the status is in their country?
-Which governmental department(s) in their country are involved in this implementation process?
-Who our members could contact to get more detailed information?
I suggest that the country representatives within COMMON FORUM could mail the answers to the questions above to the NICOLE representative in COMMON FORUM: Marc van Gijzel (Corporate Operational Excellence Royal Vopak) email: marc.van.gijzel@vopak.com
NICOLE does not expect very lengthy answers, short info is enough especially if the question about where to get additional information is answered.
4] EUGRIS
As EUGRIS wants to keep the discussion alive about the relation with COMMON FORUM, Paul Bardos prepared a presentation which he wants to share with us. As the powerpoint file is quite bulky I attached a Zip archive containing the slides as jpg files. [attachment too big to be included here]. Unfortunately he is not able to come to Budapest to discuss these matters further. COMMON FORUM already briefly discussed the EUGRIS questions at the NICOLE workshop in Sardinia, but in view of the small number of participants it is worthwhile to put EUGRIS on the agenda again for Budapest
4] OTHER NEWS:
*Nicole workshop report*
Report of the NICOLE workshop in Cagliari, ” The impact of EU Directives on the management of Contaminated Land” . For those of you who could not attend the workshop, please find final report at the NICOLE website: http://www.nicole.org
*EU coordination action RISKBASE*
The coordination RISKBASE is accepted and will be funded under EU 6th frameworkprogramme. RISKBASE wants to bring together results of AQUATERRA and many other projects in the field of land- sediment- and water- management to analyse how far we got in our understanding of these systems in view of risk based land (and water) management. The kick off meeting will be in September 2006
*AQUATERRA, what next ?*
The AQUATERRA annual meeting took place in Tuebingen ( Germany), 11 and 12 April. AQUATERRA, studying diffuse pollution in the soil and water systems, is addressing the grand picture at the riverbasin scale and mainly agricultural and natural soils ( fortunately still the majority). Integration of subprojects whithin AQUATERRA improved significantly and I feel that the partners of the quite large AQUATERRA consortium have now a much clearer view on the common goals in AQUATERRA. To a very large extent AQUATERRA is still a “natural sciences” project. The upcoming FP 6 project RISK BASE will address the management issues. Considering this there still is a gap concerning urban soils. As you may know a huge urbanisation is expected in the EU in the next decades which may force us to consider other ecological services of these soils than only the support of buildings and roads. There is also a clear link with contamination and sealing. There is a need for an (FP 7 ?) project on urban soil environments to provide EU with the necessary knowledge to assure ’sustainable’ urbanisation from the soil and water point of view. Such a project could complement the AQUATERRA and make use of the management concepts which will be developed by RISK BASE. I wonder whether there are any initiatives in the EU memberstates to formulate research proposals in this area. If there are please inform me.
5] MY MAIN QUESTIONS:
a)Please try to answer the questions from NICOLE and mail them to Marc van Gijzel
b) Do you know any research initiatives concerning ‘Urban soils, including ecological aspects”
Best regards,
Joop Vegter
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COMMON FORUM NEWS NR. 8 meeting in Budapest
By Joop | February 20, 2006
Dear All,
1] COMMON FORUM in BUDAPEST
Please check your calendar. We have two options for a full meeting in Budapest in May. Either Thursday18 and Friday 19 or Thursday 25 and Friday 26. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHICH DATES YOU PREFER, BEFORE THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARI. , In view of meeting room reservations. The meeting will start on Thursday at 10.00hr and end on Friday at 15.00. Details and agenda of the meeting will follow.
2] SOIL STRATEGY PUBLICATION PROBABLY DELAYED
There are indications that the “EU Soil policy package” as proposed by DG ENV did not pass the interservice consultations without questions and comments. There is (as far as I know) no new official schedule, but it is very unlikely that the proposals will be published in April. We may know more by the time of the meeting in Budapest, but our agenda will be devoted to the issues we all think are important, with our without EC proposals.
3] OTHER NEWS
Some of you may have received an invitation to the NICOLE workshop in Carcassonne (France), 11 and 12 May, directly from Marian Euser. Her mailing list was sligtly different than my COMMON FORUM list. So I decided to include the NICOLE invitation in this mail. See attached invitation [Invitation.pdf].
Another interesting conference is about Groundwater. It is organized under the EU presidency of Austria and will take place in Vienna 22 and 23 June. See following weblink: http://www.umweltbundesamt.at/en/umweltschutz/wasser/wasser_events/eu-grundwasser2006
Best regards,
Joop Vegter
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