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Waste experts to represent MED Forum

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Waste experts to represent MED Forum

WASTE is one of the priorities of MED Forum 2000 Agenda, and of the Network’s Programme of Activities for this year. This means that MED Forum has to develop proposals and carry on activities, as well as to be part in all concerned bodies, and participate in meetings which debate proposals on wastes affecting the Mediterranean

For this reason we need to know which are the NGOs of MED Forum most specialized and active in waste, and counting with waste experts within its members.

If your NGO is one of them, please, send to us information on the activities your organization has carried out related to waste, and a list of your waste experts. Also indicate which is your availability to attend international fora and meetings representing MED Forum.

From these informations the Executive Committee of MED Forum will decide the more relevant NGOs to represent our Network in international fora and other waste related activities.

Greening the Treaty III

We received this message from the EEB. It contains the proposals that the following NGOs' agreeded for the next round of "Greening the Treaty".

We would like to inform you that MED Forum has expressed its full support to these proposals.

Institutional Reform, Citizen’s Rights and Sustainable Development

Proposals for the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference

WorldWide Fund for Nature (WWF)

Summary of the proposals

The European environmental organisations listed above (and the national, regional and local organisations we represent) have four demands for the upcoming revision of the Amsterdam Treaty. We make these demands mindful of:

- the need to strengthen the EU’s institutions in anticipation of the EU’s enlargement;

- the importance of bringing the EU closer to its citizens; and

- the need for the EU to move forward on the path to sustainable development.

We therefore call on the EU to:

1. Use qualified majority voting for all decisionmaking on the environment, in particular for fiscal measures for environmental purposes.

2. Unlock the doors to the European Court of Justice for cases against the EU institutions brought by citizens or their organisations to defend interests of a shared nature, such as the environment.

Include the right to a clean and healthy environment in the Treaty or a binding Charter of Fundamental Rights.

4. Require the European Commission, as part of the Community’s lawmaking procedures, to promote a meaningful and ongoing civil dialogue with non-governmental organisations at the Community level.

‘Greening the Treaty III’: Background

This is the third effort European environmental organisations have made for ‘Greening the Treaty’. In each of the two previous IGCs, the demands we have made on behalf of the EU’s citizens for a stronger and more effective environmental role for the EU have been answered, but only in part.

The Treaty of Amsterdam made significant strides to strengthen sustainable development as an objective of the Union and to emphasise the requirement that environmental protection be integrated in other policy areas and activities of the Union. Previously, the Treaty of Maastricht had also improved the environmental provisions of the Treaty.

Nevertheless, at Amsterdam and earlier at Maastricht, the first three of the above demands have been ignored. Just as it is no longer possible to avoid the difficult questions of institutional reform which Amsterdam postponed, so, too, is it time to meet these demands.

By so doing, the EU will be delivering on the environmental promise made by the Treaty of Amsterdam. By so doing, the EU will also be keeping the commitment it made when the Community and each of its 15 member states signed the Aarhus Convention. The demands we are making - for the right to a clean and healthy environment, for improved public participation, and for access to justice - relate directly to the implementation of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

The upcoming Treaty revision will focus on the reforms needed to make the EU’s institutions ready for a Union of 20 or more member states. These reforms to the EU’s institutions are also important for the environment. The EU’s environmental policy, to be credible and effective, requires majority decisionmaking procedures and a strong position for the European Parliament. Not only does the EU need actually to move toward sustainable development, the EU also needs to win a sustained level of public support and trust, both in the existing and the new member states. Such support is best achieved by recognizing the public’s environmental rights and by giving citizens and their organisations the ability to enforce these rights.

1. Use qualified majority voting for all decisionmaking on the environment, in particular for fiscal measures for environmental purposes.

It is widely recognized that the requirement of unanimity for decisionmaking is, in an EU of 15 or more member states, a recipe for paralysis. As the EU grows to 20 members or more, the paralysis will only worsen - unless the unanimity rule is changed. The possible extension of majority voting is therefore one of the three subject areas which the European Council in Cologne (June 1999) identified for the agenda of the upcoming Treaty revision.

Support for the extension of majority voting has already been voiced in many quarters, most recently by the President of the European Commission, in the Dehaene Report, by the European Parliament, and by a number of member states. Given this widespread support, it is likely that the rule of unanimity will be changed in any number of individual Treaty provisions. Most likely, case-by-case consideration will be given to replacing unanimity by qualified majority voting. In the environmental area, unanimity is still the rule for several important policy areas. It is essential, in particular for environmental measures of a fiscal nature, to eliminate the paralysis caused by the unanimity requirement.

The paralyzing consequence of unanimity for EU environmental policy has been made abundantly clear by the EU’s repeated failures to adopt any form of energy/CO2 tax. The Treaty should be amended so that environmental measures of a fiscal nature can be adopted by qualified majority voting in Council and in co-decision with the European Parliament. This will require changes to the environmental article (art. 175) and possibly also to the provisions concerning taxes (in particular art. 93), as suggested below.

Explanation:

Although most environmental measures are adopted by qualified majority voting (art. 175(1) and in co-decision with the European Parliament), Article 175(2) lists several significant categories of environmental measures which are to be adopted by unanimity. These include provisions primarily of a fiscal nature; measures concerning town and country planning and land use; and measures concerning water resource management and energy sources and supply. By deleting article 175(2), the general rule found in article 175(1) would apply, namely that environmental measures are to be adopted by qualified majority voting (and in co-decision with the Parliament).

Article 93 concerns various forms of taxes and charges and requires unanimity. It is unlikely that qualified majority voting will be introduced for all these taxes and charges. A rewording of the provision is therefore necessary to make clear that fiscal measures with an environmental purpose, adopted in respect of article 175, do not fall under the unanimity requirement.

2. Unlock the doors to the European Court of Justice for cases brought against the EU institutions by citizens or their organisations to defend interests of a shared nature, such as the environment.

Institutional reform, to be meaningful to the EU’s citizens, cannot be only a technical matter of the number of votes in Council or members of the Commission. The EU also desperately needs institutions that are responsive to its citizens.

As things now stand, however, the European Court of Justice is closed to individuals and organisations defending shared or common concerns, such as an interest in the environment, against infringements by the Commission or other EU institutions. The right of access to justice for environmental cases is effectively absent from the EU Treaty. This is contrary to the general principle that a citizen should be able to challenge his or her government when it acts in violation of the law. The EU institutions should not be above the law either. But as long as the courthouse door remains closed to challenges to protect environmental or other shared interests, the EU institutions are insufficiently accountable to the EU citizen.

The lack of accountability was confirmed most recently by the decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a case brought by Greenpeace and others against the European Commission. Referring to its caselaw developed in cases concerning economic or commercial interests, the Court slammed the courthouse door closed on citizens and environmental organisations seeking to defend the environment. The Court ruled that neither environmental organisations like Greenpeace nor environmentally-concerned individuals have the ‘direct and individual concern’ which the Treaty (art. 230, para. 4) requires a person to have in order to bring a case before the ECJ. In legal terms, there is no ‘standing’ or ‘locus standi’ that would allow citizens or their organisations to defend their shared interest in the environment.

In contrast, in each member state, some form of access to justice in environmental matters already exists. Challenges which a citizen of the EU can make at member state level are however impossible at EU level. There are thus two shortcomings in the Treaty which need to be addressed. One, the EU denies its citizens a right at EU level which they have, in some form, as citizens of a member state. Two, an ‘enforcement deficit’ exists since infringements of EU rules in many cases cannot be challenged in practice: those with access to the Courts have no interest in bringing the case and the Commission cannot reasonably be expected to enforce Community Law against itself. On the other hand, those with an interest are barred from the Court. This is all the more unfortunate since it means that individuals and environmental organisations are barred from helping to play a supplemental role in enforcing environmental protection requirements.

The ECJ’s own Advocate General in the Greenpeace case acknowledged that the Treaty requirements for access to justice needed to be interpreted in a manner that does not leave environmental and other collective interests unprotected. The ECJ choose to ignore this advice.

The lack of protection offered by the Treaty for the defense of shared interest has been recognized by legal scholars and others as well. This lack of protection for environmental interests is also incompatible with the Aarhus Convention which states in its preamble that ‘effective judicial mechanisms should be accessible to the public, including organisations, so that its legitimate interests are protected and the law is enforced’ and specifies that each party shall provide access to administrative or judicial review procedures (art. 9.3).

We are mindful of the concern about the number of cases - in other areas - being brought before the Court of Justice. In our estimation, the proposed amendment would not lead to a flood of new case or overburden the Courts. Moreover, administrative workload is an argument in favor of increasing judicial resources and not an argument which can validly be used to justify denying judicial protection in an important area of law.

The Treaty should therefore be amended to make explicit that the defense of common interests, such as an interest in the environment, is possible. The barrier that the Court’s current restrictive interpretation of the requirement of ‘individual concern’ forms must be removed. The Treaty must clearly provide citizens or their representative organisations the possibility to bring challenges against decisions made by the EU institutions before the European Court of Justice.

Explanation

As currently phrased in Article 230 (ex Article 173) of the Treaty, the Treaty allows only certain parties to bring cases to the European Court of Justice or the Court of First Instance. These are privileged applicants (Member States, the Council or the Commission) and, "where their prerogatives are affected", semi-privileged applicants (the European Parliament, the Court of Auditors and the ECB).

Natural and legal persons are allowed to bring cases only where they can demonstrate "direct and individual concern". Under existing jurisprudence, primarily developed in competition cases and other areas where the concerns are of a commercial nature, to be considered ‘individually concerned’, individuals or non-governmental organisations must demonstrate that they are affected by the decision they wish to challenge in a manner that "differentiates them from all other persons, and thereby distinguishes them individually in the same way as the person addressed".

Where an interest such as the environment is concerned, the problems with this formulation are obvious. By its very nature, the environment concerns the many rather than the few, and only in extremely rare circumstances would an environmental problem affect an individual in a manner that singles him out from all other individuals. In a case brought by Greenpeace and others, the non-governmental organisations and individuals were not allowed to bring the substance of the Commission’s alleged infringements to the Court’s attention because they were not considered to be affected by the violation in a manner that distinguished them from all other persons. (Case nr. C-321/95P, 2 April 1998, appealing the decision of the Court of First Instance in T-585/93, 9 August 1995). In fact, as legal scholars commenting on the Court’s decision in the Greenpeace case have pointed out, under the Court’s interpretation, the more people are harmed by a violation, the less access they have to the Court.

The Court of First Instance ruled that the environmental organisations and the individual applicants did not meet the requirement of "individual concern"; the applicants were therefore not allowed to go on to present the substance of the alleged violations of Community law to the Court. The appeal was even more disappointing: although the European Court of Justice’s own Advocate General acknowledged that the requirements for access to justice needed to be interpreted in a manner that does not leave environmental and other collective interests unprotected, the Court contented itself with confirming the decision of the Court of First Instance.

In sum, the EU Courts have shown themselves unwilling to interpret the requirements for access to justice in a manner that protects collective interests, leaving the latter undefended in Community Courts. Therefore, modification of the Treaty is required.

Without such modification, where the Commission itself has failed to comply with Community Law, a gap in enforcement of Community Law exists. The Commission cannot reasonably be expected to enforce Community Law against itself. Other privileged applicants have no interest in bringing the case and non-privileged applicants (e.g. ordinary citizens or their organisations) are barred from the courts.

3. Include the right to a clean and healthy environment in the Charter of Fundamental Rights

The fundamental right of every person to live in a clean and healthy environment should be recognized by the European Union. We support the inclusion of such a right either in the Treaty itself or, if the Charter of Fundamental Rights that is now being prepared in parallel with the negotiations for a new Treaty is intended to have a binding character, in this Charter.

Ten years ago, the European Council’s Dublin Declaration on ‘the Environmental Imperative’ (June 1990) endorsed the right to a clean and healthy environment for the citizens of the European Union. It is time that the expression of this right finds its place in the EU’s fundamental legal instruments.

The inclusion of a right to a clean and healthy environment would guide the EU institutions in the exercise of their duties and encourage them to act in a manner that upholds this right (e.g. when developing policies or legislation). Further, such a right more clearly establishes the link between environmental and public health policies, two important concerns of the EU’s citizens.

The right to a clean and healthy environment can be traced back to the Stockholm Declaration adopted by the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. The right has also already found expression in the constitutions of a number of the member states and candidate member states. For example, the Spanish Constitution includes the ‘right to enjoy an environment suitable for personal development and the duty to preserve it’ (art. 45). The Dutch Constitution states that the government has a duty to care for the habitability of the country and the protection and improvement of the human environment (art. 21). The Belgian Constitution recognizes everyone’s ‘right to the protection of a healthy environment’ (art. 23).

Inclusion of the right to a clean and healthy environment would also be in keeping with the recently adopted Aarhus Convention which has been signed by the Community and all 15 of its member states. The Aarhus Convention concerns the rights of access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters. It opens by recognizing ‘the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being’ (art. 1).

The language we propose refers to future generations, reflecting a central element of the term ‘sustainable development’, namely that the future quality of the environment and the ability of future generations to meet their own needs must not be compromised by the activities of present generations. The EU already supports the duty of African, Caribbean and Pacific States to safeguard the rights of future generations in, for example, the Lomé IV Convention. Article 33 of this Convention states: "In the framework of this Convention, the protection and the enhancement of the environment and natural resources, the halting of the deterioration of land and forests, the restoration of ecological balances, the preservation of natural resources and their rational exploitation are basic objectives that the ACP States concerned shall strive to achieve with Community support with a view to bringing an immediate improvement in the living conditions of their populations and to safeguarding those of future generations." (emphasis added). The EU should take this occasion to apply this duty more clearly to itself.

Explanation

The Charter of Fundamental Rights would be the most appropriate place for the right to be expressed provided the Charter has a binding character and is connected to the Treaty. If the Charter does not have a binding character or is not connected to the Treaty, it would be appropriate to express the right in the Treaty itself.

4. Civil Society Dialogue

The decisions and actions of the EU institutions are of increasing importance for civil society in Europe. It is time that formal rights and procedures be established for an open ongoing dialogue between citizens’ organisations and the EU institutions. This is essential to maintain the connection between citizens and their governing institutions.

A broad coalition of groups representing various facets of civil society is seeking to have the Treaty specify that the Commission promote such civil dialogue. Such a provision would lend strength to current Commission efforts to structure such a dialogue.

Such a provision would form part of the implementation of the public participation requirements of the Aarhus Convention. The Aarhus Convention requires ‘ each party to strive to promote effective public participation at an appropriate stage’ and specifically refers to such measures as publication of draft rules and the fixing of time-frames for effective public participation (art. 8).

Explanation

At present, consultation between non-governmental organisations and the Commission concerning new initiatives for policy and legislation is often ad hoc, late and unstructured, if it takes place at all. The intention of this provision is to require the Commission to develop a mechanism and structure for consultation.

This could take various forms and would be most effective if linked to the decisionmaking procedures. For example, the Commission should systematically give notice of its intention to develop policy or legislation in a particular area and invite interested groups to comment. Draft proposals could similarly be made available for comment, something the Commission is already doing, albeit sporadically. Modern communications and information technology now make it possible for individuals and organisations throughout the EU, no matter how remote from Brussels, to be informed and to participate in policy development. In addition,where appropriate, hearings, meetings or other forms of consultation could also be organized.

The proposed change is intended to make the Commission and its policy development more accessible, open and closer to the EU’s citizens and their organisations.

The Seydoux Foundation, whose aim is to develop and strengthen solidarity between the countries of the Mediterranean region, has just published the sixth edition of its Mediterranean directory. This new edition losts and describes 814 centres or bodies in 43 countries that are active in the social, cultural and scientific fields. As an information tool and an instrument for cooperation, the directory is divided into two separate sections: one on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the other on European countries that do not actually border on it.

AFS Interkultur

Did you ever think of inviting a teacher form Africa to teach your pupils? "The Global Guest Teacher" is a manual for teachers propmoting intercultural and aglobal learning in partnership with teachers from other countries. The 177-page manual provides both background reading and practical suggestions and is edited in English and Danish by AFS Interkultur in the basis of 50 case studies collected since 1986. They show how gaining insights into African cultures enables Danish (and European) pupils to gain insights into their own cultures and society as well.

Directory of Best Environmental Directories (www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/cds.html)

The best environmental directories is a selection of best internet environmental directories (list of lists), for more than 500 environmental subjects.

The Aquatic Network (www.aquanet.com)

The subject areas of this web site covered include aquaculture, conservation, fisheries, limnology, marine science, and oceanography, maritime heritage, ocean engineering, and seafood.