Preventing “legal tourism”: that is one of the objectives of the agreement between Parliament and Council on the directive relating to environmental liability. The regulations, which will come into force by the end of the year (while the national legislation for their implementation must be adopted within three years), involve tougher application of the principle “whoever pollutes shall pay”. The costs of operations for the repair of environmental damage shall be paid by the company or the operator responsible for causing it. If it proves impossible to determine the perpetrator of the damage, the competent authorities may themselves adopt the necessary remedial measures. The legislation on environmental liability will thus be harmonized throughout the Union, in such a way that companies and other operators shall be obliged to respect the same regulations on their liability in all countries and be dissuaded from exploiting loopholes in the legislation of various states: what has been termed “legal tourism”. The new legislation comes on the back of the major ecological disasters of recent decades, from Seveso to the oil tanker Prestige, from the Amoco Cadiz and Erika to the fire that destroyed the Sandoz plant in Basel in 1986. Firms may protect themselves from the costs consequent on any environmental damage by taking out an insurance policy or having recourse to other forms of financial guarantee. Oil pollution is a case in itself: an international compensation fund was established in 2003 to cover the environmental damage caused by oil spillages; it is funded by the purchasers of oil products and not by shipowners. The EP, judging that this situation favours the lesser liability of shipowners in terms of environmental damage, has obtained from the Commission an undertaking that it will try to increase this liability when the directive comes up for re-examination ten years after coming into force. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1286 N.ro relativo : 26 Data pubblicazione : 07/04/2004
