At a session of the European Union Environment Council held this week in Luxemburg, a political agreement was achieved on two issues instead of the three expected. Estonia is ready to meet the EU requirements arising from both agreements. The three most important decision-making areas of the Environment Council included ship fuel sulphur content, the quality of bathing water and international transport of waste. Agreements were made on the first two issues and the related directives will be sent to the European Parliament for second reading. The first political agreement achieved by the Environment Council concerned the sulphur content of ship fuel. The requirement of 1.5% sulphur content will presumably enter into force on 19 May 2006 and the requirements for berthed ships will take effect on 1 January 2010. All Member States except for Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta agreed to the requirements of the directive. A political agreement was also achieved on the directive concerning the quality of bathing water. All states participating in the Environment Council accepted the norms for satisfactory category of bathing water based on which the acceptable level of the Intestinal Enterococci bacteria in water would be 360 cfu (colony forming units) per 100 ml and the respective level of the Escherischia Coli bacteria would be 900 units. Hungary considered these norms to be too strict for them. The Commission and Germany, however, would have wanted to impose even tougher requirements. The question of the designation of the category („acceptable“ or „satisfactory“) will be left for lawyer-linguists to decide. The third issue on which the Environment Council desired to achieve a political agreement was the draft regulation on international transport of waste. However, Member States had a number of concerns regarding the draft. Although Ireland as the presiding country was able to solve these issues, the agreement could not be made due to Italy’s additional conditions. Ireland promised to bring this matter back to the Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER) as soon as possible. The EU Environment Council also discussed the propo sal of the European Commission to authorise the import and processing of genetically modified maize NK603 in the European Union. The Environment Council failed to achieve an agreement on this matter. Therefore, the proposal will be returned to the Commission who will make a final decision in a couple of weeks. In addition to the above, the Environment Council agreed on the conclusions and proposals regarding the fulfilment of the biological diversity strategy and discussed the mining waste directive on which the Council hopes to agree in October. At this session of the Environment Council, Estonia was represented by Olavi Tammemäe, assistant minister of the Ministry of the Environment. Further information: |
