LAST COMMON FORUM MEETING IN STUTTGART
Dear All,
Please find the Meeting Report (PDF file - 76 KB) of the last COMMON FORUM and the presentation of French policy developments (PDF file - 354 KB) by Jean-Luc Perrin at this meeting. After this meeting an intensive email discussion among the country representatives in COMMON FORUM has resulted in a list of proposals for changes in the Soil Framework Directive, which is currently discussed in EU Council and in EU Parliament. This document (SFDCOMFORDRAFT4 (PDF file - 84 KB)) is also attached to this mail. It is important to note that this is NOT intended as a “COMMON FORUM” position but as a source of inspiration for those involved in the political discussions. Those of you who follow the discussions in the Council and EU parliament may have noted that this inspiration indeed worked.
OTHER ATTACHMENTS:
a) Social cost-benefit analysis of the soil remediation operation in the Netherlands (PDF file - 48 KB). As promised the english summary of a report on the benefits of soil remediation in the NL. Further information: Co.molenaar@minvrom.nl
b) Community guidelines for state aid for environmental protection. Victor Dries asked me to bring this Community guidelines (PDF file - 120 KB) under your attention, as a follow up of the state aid discussions we had in Bilbao.
EUGRIS NEWS
EUGRIS news may 2007 (PDF file - 11 KB)
EUGRIS news june 2007 (PDF file - 15 KB)
PRESENTATION SETAC CONFERENCE
The SETAC (Society for environmental toxicology and chemistry), a big worldwide scientific organisation held a conference in Porto on 20-24 May 2007. There was a special session on Soil, where Niek de Wit (EUDGENV) presented an overview of EU soil protection policy, and Luca Montanarella (EU DGJRC- European Soil Bureau) presented the history of EU involvement in Soil Protection.
I was asked by the SETAC Europe president to give a presentation about the Pro´s and Con´s of the proposed European Soil Framework Directive, see attached presentation (PDF file - 700 KB) which can be summarized as follows:
All EU memberstates welcomed the initiative for soil protection at the EU level because it puts soil higher on the policital agenda. The scope of EU soil protection is wider than current soil protection in most memberstates. The legal part of the policy, the soil framework directive, does however give rise to some debate, especially the proposed legal obligations concerning the management of (historically) contaminated sites. Countries that have a long policy tradition in contaminated land remediation are afraid that they have to revise their successful policies, wheras countries that still have to start with the assessment of their contaminated land problems seem to want as much guidance from the directive as possible. It will be difficult to find the right balance in the directive.
Heterogeneity in national soil policies is not the only difficulty however. Soil types are widely different over Europe and so is the way these soils are used, which in turn leads to important regional social and economic differences. Moreover the majority of soil problems are local and although transboundary problems do exist some may say that these do not justify an EU wide framework directive.On the other hand if we consider the joint impact of the many local soil problems there is indeed a European dimension. One should also be aware that “Europe” is almost always part of the solution of these local or regional soil problems, if we consider the impact of subsidized agriculture on soils, the impact EU controlled air pollution on soils, the impact of EU approved waste recycling on soils and the potential impact of widely different national soil protection policies on the balance of competion between Member States. The presentation addressed the various implications of the current proposal and their pro’s and con’s in view of a more sustainable use of soil (and water) resources in Europe.
The discussions at SETAC were quite interesting, but an important observation was that new Member States from Eastern Europe do know far more about the state of their soil than the countries from the west. It was also noted that for the SETAC scientists the most important scientific contribution still seems to be the derivation of soil quality standards. Many other scientific questions about sustainable management of soil resources are hardly recognized, which means that there is a lot of work to do to improve the interface between science and policy in soil protection.
NEXT COMMON FORUM MEETING IN STOCKHOLM
COMMON FORUM will meet together with ICCL from 10 till 12 September in Stockholm. The main COMMON FORUM topics for the agenda are:
1] Quality control and management of contaminated land risk assessments and remediation, by certification, and standardization via protocols and other means
2] Discussions on technical details of the proposed SFD and perhaps certain amendments proposed by EU parliament, and the COMMON FORUM strategy to make the best of this directive.
3] A discussion on a document evaluating the COMMON FORUM secretariat project and exploring the possibilties for the future.
4] Planning of the next COMMON FORUM meeting.
Topics 2,3 and 4 are internal EU “political” affairs and internal housekeeping in COMMON FORUM and will be discussed on 12 September, the “COMMON FORUM only” part of the meeting. ICCL delegates will be welcome as guests if they are interested.
SECRETARIAT HOLIDAYS
Please note that the secretariat will be on holidays from July 6 till August 4 2007.
|
