This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at El Parlamento Europeo aprueba la Directiva “quien contamina paga”
European Parliament approves the directive "polluter pays"
31/03/2004
on March 31, 2004
The European Parliament today adopted the directive on environmental liability, based on the principle that "who contaminated pays", following the agreement reached in the Conciliation Committee between the House and the Council.
The regulations, which shall enter into force in 2004 and will begin to be implemented within three years, will cover the damage caused by occupational activities, and in cases in which ill-treatment fault or negligence, be included even activities not expressly contained in the annex to the law.
With this new directive, the EU wants to stop the so-called "legal tourism", a strategy by which operators are looking for the country with less stringent environmental legislation to implement its activities there. The text of the standard includes a number of exceptions, such as national defense, international security, damage resulting from wars, natural phenomena of "exceptional", incidents or nuclear risks already covered by an International Convention.
The directive does not provide the granting of compensation to individuals, but yes they could benefit from compensation so established in national laws. In this sense, insurance has been one of the most debated issues, given that the Union wanted to avoid declarations of bankruptcy for failing to deal with payments.
At first, the European Parliament called because in the future be forced companies to obtain insurance. Finally, the compromise agreed with the Council urges Member States to promote the development of "tools of financial guarantee".
More information: www.europa.eu.int/
