Europe Gets New Leadership, Ratifies POPS Treaty

BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 19, 2004 (ENS) - The European Union took two big steps in the past 24 hours. The Council of Ministers and Parliamentappointed a new executive branch under a new president, and the EU stepped up efforts to get rid of the world’s most toxic chemicals by ratifying the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, will install his new 24 member Commission on Monday. Parliament approved his lineup Thursday after President Barroso replaced three members of his original team, including an Italian conservative Catholic who was seen as too right-wing to become commissioner responsible for justice.

Barroso offered his thanks on behalf of the whole Commission team for the vote of confidence. "We have a great deal of work to do, and we will now get down to it," he said. Outgoing President Romano Prodi of Italy offered his congratulations and warm wishes to his successor.

Outgoing President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, congratulates his successor, President-designate Jose Barroso. (Photo courtesy European Commission)

Lawyer and economist Stavros Dimas of Greece take over as the new environment commissioner.

Dimas will take over a directorate that has just taken on the responsibility of implementing the POPS treaty, the most important global effort to ban the use of toxic chemicals.

The Stockholm Convention entered into force on May 17, 2004 and has so far been ratified by 83 countries from all over the world.

Among the 12 chemicals whose production and use it bans are three types: pesticides, such as DDT; industrial chemicals, such as PCBs; and unintentional by-products of industrial processes, such as dioxin and furans.

Most of these substances are known to cause cancer or be otherwise toxic. Thirteen EU member states are already Parties to the Convention, the others are expected to ratify shortly.

Wallstrom today welcomed the ratification of the POPS Convention "as an important step to rid the world of the worst man-made substances."

Margot Wallstrom will leave the post of environment commissioner and become one of five vice presidents. (Photo courtesy European Commission)

It also gives the EU the right to propose additional POPs to be banned under the Convention.

The Commission has already prepared a list of nine substances that should be the next generation of phase-outs. Said Wallstrom, "I am urgently waiting for the go-ahead from Council to submit this list to the Convention.

The ratification does not change the way these substances are dealt with in the EU. EU legislation has already been aligned with the Convention, going even further with a regulation that bans the intentional production, marketing and use in the EU of the substances listed under the Convention so far, the so-called "dirty dozen."

But unintentional releases remain a problem even in the EU. They include dioxin which can be produced through incomplete combustion, and PCBs - industrial chemicals which can be released if equipment containing them is not handled and disposed of properly.

These pollutants are therefore subject to a specific 10 year strategy adopted in 2001 as well as other EU legislation.

In his speech to the European Parliament Wednesday, Barroso sketched his agenda for the coming five years. "We must create the conditions for growth and jobs, sharing prosperity and opportunity across the whole of the Union; to do this we must put a premium on innovation, education and research – we must leverage knowledge for growth," he said. "And if I refer to the economy first, it is not because it is an end in its own right; it is because a strong and dynamic economy is a pre-condition to our ambitious social and environmental goals."

"We must reaffirm the Union’s pre-eminent role as an area of freedom and justice," he said, "and we must consolidate our leadership in striving for peace, security and sustainable development around the globe."