Printer Friendly
Email a Friend
Commission Denies Deficiencies in Environmental Legislation.
01 Mar 2006
Speakers at the first GreenPort Conference in Antwerp in February had a clash of opinion as to whether European environmental legislation, and in particular the Habitats and Water Framework Directives, has inherent deficiencies causing bottlenecks for port development.
Speakers in the morning session had identified a clear need for further port expansion in Europe to accommodate ever increasing demand. Ocean Shipping Consultants'Director Andrew Penfold indicated that if further growth is the policy, ports could not just rely on improving productivity but would have to invest in new capacity.
In the afternoon session, Professor Eric Van Hooydonk of the University of Antwerp gave some preliminary findings of a study he was making for the European Commission (DG TREN) on the impact of environmental legislation on infrastructure development and maintenance for inland waterways and ports. The report will be finalised this month.
Professor Van Hooydonk said that, despite numerous useful initiatives to better co-ordinate EU transport and environment policies, a number of unresolved problems remained, such as the ignorance of pre-existing legal regimes of port development areas, the absence of rules on compensation for port authorities and insufficient guidance on key concepts.
Professor Van Hooydonk therefore advocated amendments to the existing Habitats and Water Framework Directives as well as to the draft Marine Strategy Directive.
His criticism was refuted by the Commission's new Head of Unit for Protection of Water and Marine Environment, Peter Gammeltoft, who said that providing more legal certainty in environmental legislation would clash with the subsidiarity principle and would rule out flexibility for Member States.
Mr Gammeltoft said he believed that the present legal framework was sufficiently balanced and that there was no need to design systems which would prevent complaints against infrastructure development projects. He further indicated that environmental legislation in principle never provided compensation for infrastructure managers.
The Secretary General of the European Seaports Organisation, Patrick Verhoeven, said European ports had to pursue a double approach, 'We must continue to point out to the Commission that environmental legislation has some fundamental deficiencies and the forthcoming revision of European seaport policy may be a good opportunity to do so. Meanwhile ports have to cope with the existing legal framework.'He also referred to the new Guidance Document on Natura 2000 that ESPO is currently preparing and which forms a good combination of a practical and a policy instrument.
The document will be published in autumn this year.
Images for this article - click to enlarge
All images copyright © Mercator Media 2008
