Environment Committee adopts IPPC Recast (IED) Second Reading report

Parliament’s Environment Committee adopted the Draft Recommendation for Second Reading on the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPCⁱ) Recast on 4 May 2010, by 40 votes in favour to 13 against.

The Committee agreed on stricter conditions for deviating from best available techniques (BATⁱ). Operators of IPPC installations would only be able to deviate from BAT in “exceptional” cases, provided certain conditions are met; operators must be able to prove that they cannot apply BAT because of technical characteristics and because it would lead to “disproportionately high costs”. The Committee also backed Mr Krahmer’s proposed minimum emission limit values for industrial sectors with a high environmental impact or where BAT is not properly implemented. The adopted recommendation states that limits should be decided through the co-decision procedure, following sectoral assessments.

Rapporteur Holger Krahmer (ALDE, Germany) said that the recommendation adopted by the Committee was a good start for negotiations with the Council of Ministers, due to begin shortly. A plenary vote in Strasbourg on the IPPC Recast is scheduled for 6 July 2010.

CEMBUREAU, together with other industry sectors, is advocating that it is important to understand and recognise that not all specific situations across Europe can be captured within the range of the Best Available Techniques Associated Emission Levels (BATAELs), as required under Article 15.3 (setting of emission limit values for permitting). CEMBUREAU thus supports derogations in specific cases, where justifiable – and does not support “in a limited number of specific cases” as it would introduce legal uncertainty on its actual meaning.

In addition, and in relation to the Union Wide Minimum Requirements (Article 13.5) CEMBUREAU prefers the BAT application with the possibility of a justified derogation in specific cases, rather than uncertain minimum requirements.

The draft recommendation for a second reading can be found here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMPARL+PE-430.626+02+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

The draft compromise package proposed by Holger Krahmer can be found here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/envi/dv/814/814654/814654en.pdf