Pollution industrielle : le Parlement réaffirme son dispositif de sécurité[en] 

The 1996 Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) introduced a permit system to prevent and limit pollution from large-scale industrial installations. Sectors covered include everything from metals, chemicals and paper to processed food, oil refineries and large-scale pig and poultry farms. 

Permits are issued by the competent authorities in member states and require industrial operators to apply Best Available Techniques (BATs), considered the most cost-effective means of achieving a high level of environmental protection.

Based on the BATs, which are set at EU level, the permits include precise limit values for atmospheric pollutants that cause acid rain and smog, such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and dust.

Nevertheless, the current directive allows authorities to take into account the technical characteristics and location of the installation concerned, as well as local environmental conditions, when drawing up emission limits. The Commission believes this flexibility is being abused.

Indeed, although member states were given eight years (until October 2007) to ensure that their existing industrial installations are fully compliant, according to the Commission, just 50% of installations in the EU have been granted permits so far.

The Parliament plenary adopted a report drafted by German MEP Holger Krahmer (ALDE), agreeing to more stringent limit values for pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides proposed by the Commission in its recast of the Industrial Pollution Prevention and Control Directive. 

The recast, approved in committee in January (EurActiv 23/01/09), will require some 52,000 industrial operators to obtain permits from national authorities to release pollutants into the air, soil or water.

Nevertheless, MEPs want to go further to insert to the directive the so-called "European safety network", legally binding minimum emission limit values, which cannot be exceeded by any installation.

So far, the Parliament and the Council have not seen eye to eye on the issue. While MEPs insist that minimum values are necessary to avoid a large-scale resort to exemptions, ministers think these are too costly and fail to take local circumstances into account. They prefer the Commission's approach, strengthening the role of Best Available Techniques (BATs), which are deemed to be the most effective emission reduction technologies, according to EU reference documents on best-available technologies (BREFs) (EurActiv 02/03/09). 

Environment ministers meeting on 2 March argued that introducing further minimum requirements could increase administrative burdens and have a harmful impact on the environment, as minimum values would represent higher emission levels than BATs.

MEPs also called for a more flexible approach to granting permits. While based on best available techniques, emission limits set for individual installations must be adaptable to local circumstances, they said.

Extending the scope

While the plenary endorsed extending the scope of the recast legislation to include medium-sized combustion plants (20-50 MW), they demanded that installations that only run for a maximum of 500 hours per year should be left outside of the directive.

MEPs also rejected the Commission's plans to widen the directive's coverage of intensive poultry farms and to differentiate between different poultry species. The Parliament voted for a compromise whereby only industries with 40,000 places for poultry are within the scope of the legislation. 

Rapporteur Krahmer was satisfied with the compromise, saying the Commission's proposal for poultry would have involved "too much red tape," without guaranteeing better environmental protection.

German Liberal rapporteur Holger Krahmer was satisfied with the result: "The minimum emission standards we have adopted by introducing the European Safety Net is the tool we need to reduce industrial emissions effectively. The existing legislation is largely neglected by the member states. Now it has a chance of succeeding. This will ensure better environmental protection and a level playing field for industry."

Ahead of the vote, speaking for the Greens, MEP Claude Turmes criticised his fellow MEPs for giving into the demands of Conservative MEPs and other politicians who do not have environmental concerns at the top of their agenda. "We can't negotiate for weeks and then undermine the compromise at the very last minute," he said, adding that it is "a shame" that the largest group in the house is no longer a reliable negotiating partner.

Speaking for the ALDE group, MEP Chris Davies said the recast was a good opportunity to amend the Directive on large combustion plants. He stated that he would prefer to see a derogation to keep old coal-powered plants running, as long as there was a guarantee that new ones would not be built in a manner that locks Europe into a high carbon economy. "But the compromise must be genuine," he asserted.

Scottish MEP Alyn Smith (Greens/EFA) critisicised the vote for burdening certain types of agriculture, the pig sector in particular, with additional pollution rules. "As ever, the principle of the legislation, that large installations be they agricultural, industrial, energy or steel plants should be subject to pollution controls is difficult to object to, but the devil was in the detail. While this dossier will, I suspect, cause us few real problems in Scotland, I am not convinced that including agriculture in pollution rules better suited to steel plants and waste incinerators is sensible or necessary," he said.

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) congratulated MEPs for strenthening the application of BATs and increasing public participation. "This vote represents a victory for Europeans' health and environment," said Christian Schaible, the EEB's industrial policy officer. 

He was satisfied that MEPs had fought off "some pretty scary amendments" proposed by the European People's Party, the largest political group in the Parliament. According to him, these would have allowed large combustion plants, the intensive farming industry and the refineries sector to evade pollution reduction requirements,  and would have removed proposed soil and groundwater protection measures.

Copa-Cogeca, the European farmers' and cooperatives' organisation, stated that the Parliament had understood the special nature of agricultural and horticultural businesses, which are often so small that they would not have the capacity to manage the IPPC implementation and compliance requirements. "It is therefore good that the Parliament has rejected the proposal to lower the rearing capacity thresholds for poultry, which would have imposed disproportionately stringent requirements on this type of farming," Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa-Cogeca, said. 

However, he expressed concerns that the new IPPC requirements will create substantial new bureaucracy and costs in other areas. "The costs linked to IPPC can be very substantial and farmers are already suffering from very difficult market situations for their products," he said.