Wallström ‘climb-down’ attacked in row over pollution liability

Date: 17/01/02

By Laurence Frost

BUSINESS leaders have won major concessions from Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström over plans to charge companies for the ecological damage caused by their activities.

Under an environmental liability directive, to be unveiled next week, governments will be able to hold polluting companies accountable for the cost of clean-up operations.

But in a climb-down condemned by green groups, Wallström has given in to pressure from Erkki Liikanen, the industry commissioner, to exempt polluting activities covered by government permits.

'This is a nonsense,' said Roberto Ferrigno, of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), one of the leading NGOs on EU green policy.

Backed by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Birdlife International, the EEB maintains that the defence of compliance with permits breaks the spirit of the 'polluter pays' principle espoused by the Commission.

'If you run somebody over through your own fault,' said Ferrigno, 'the fact that you have a driving licence is no defence.'

Pollution permits are issued to a broad range of industries under the 1996 directive on integrated pollution prevention and control.

Originally due to be tabled in December 2001, the liability proposal was postponed after objections from Liikanen and other commissioners.

An earlier draft circulated the month before had made no exceptions for firms operating under permits. EU business groups have welcomed the changes.

'It would be inappropriate to make companies liable for authorised activities carried out within the applicable legislation and the permits they have been granted,' said senior advisor to employers' organisation UNICE, Erik Berggren.

To make the firms liable would involve 'circumventing carefully balanced existing laws', Berggren added.

Wallström remains keen to limit the availability of the permit compliance defence to firms.

Pia Ahrenkilde, spokeswoman for the commissioner, said use of the defence would be 'specific' to pollution emissions expressly authorised by each permit, stressing that subsequent reviews could strengthen the directive, which has already been in the pipeline for a decade.

'It's not the final word, it's the first step,' Ahrenkilde said.

Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has also intervened to ensure the legislation does not take too tough a line on the producers and growers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Although covered by the liability rules, GMO growers will be able to escape fines for damage to the environment if they can show they acted according to the best scientific knowledge available at the time.

This is seen as a loophole by green groups and could affect the Commission's chances of ending the de facto moratorium on new GM crop approvals maintained by a French-led group of six countries.

France has hinted in the past that an effective liability regime would be necessary before the ban could be lifted.

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said last month that the US could take the Union to the World Trade Organisation if there is no movement towards an end to the moratorium.

European Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallströ, has agreed to exempt polluting activities covered by government permits from the environmental liability directive to be unveiled in January 2002.