The controversy over the dumping of pellets in Galicia, which arrived in Brussels last week, has jumped to Strasbourg this Thursday. The Commissioner for Oceans, Fisheries and the Environment, Virginijus Sinkeviciushas defended during a debate in the European Parliament on the “recent ecological catastrophe” on the northern Spanish coast the legislative proposal that the Commission presented in October to “prevent contamination by microplastics due to the unintentional loss of pellets” and has said that the EU is already working with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to adopt global measures regarding the transport of these microplastics. Meanwhile, the European hemicycle has engaged in a bitter discussion over this issue in which the Spanish MEPs have accused each other of “negligence” and of using the ecological disaster for electoral interests before the next meeting at the polls of the Galicians. .
MEPs have asked, once again, that the future European standard on pellets also applies to maritime transport, something that the Commission's original proposal does not include. Brussels' explanation is that maritime transport is global and it is not in the hands of the EU to regulate it, although a representative of the Commission opened last week during a parliamentary discussion in Brussels to study the possibility of including in the regulations, which are in its early phases of discussion, a specific “distinction” between “intra-European” and “purely international” maritime transport, so that the future law can apply at least to part of the intense maritime traffic on EU coasts.
In any case, the commissioner has indicated that the Commission is already working actively with the International Maritime Organization, responsible for this area, to adopt new measures. The IMO is “intensively” examining several issues, especially how to ensure “quality” and leak-resistant packaging, or ensuring “transport information” that allows containers to be “clearly identified.” pellets, explained before the Strasbourg plenary session.
Likewise, Sinkevicius added, the IMO is studying the possibility that, in maritime transport, containers of pellets plastic are placed below deck or in safer areas of the deck if the former is not possible. The importance of these measures being “agreed upon and adopted worldwide” is to avoid a wave of different regulations and, above all, to be able to act in a sector such as the maritime sector in which, he recalled, many containers are transported on ships from outside of the EU.
The politician has reiterated the importance of prevention, since once these microplastics are dumped, “it is difficult and expensive to recover them again.” But once this type of leak occurs, “the polluter pays principle must be applied,” he added in reference to the sanctions provided for in the European regulation.
Before the debate in plenary, Sinkevicius received several of the Spanish MEPs who had requested a meeting last week to talk about the crisis of the pellets. The socialists Nicolás González Casares and César Luena asked for “better European coordination to face the environmental crisis caused by the pellets and support for the restoration of the damage they have caused to ecosystems.” They also once again defended the need to “extend the regulation against pollution by pellets to international maritime trade and establish the mandatory geolocation of containers to help management in the event of an accident,” as indicated in a statement.
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Sinkevicius also met with Ana Miranda, from the BNG, who had invited the mayor of Muros, María Lago, to the plenary session and to the private meeting, to inform her of “the problems that Galicia is experiencing with the tide of plastics caused by the dumping of pellets and the lack of means and transparency on the part of the Galician Government to manage the pollution of the coast”, while the popular MEPs took advantage of their meeting with the European commissioner to explain “the great work that the Xunta de Galicia is doing and regret the use what the left and the nationalists are doing for electoral purposes.”
Bitter debate in the European Parliament
This Thursday's debate in the European Parliament has been very angry. Spanish MEPs have exchanged reproaches about the management of the environmental crisis in the midst of a more unified demand for Europe to ensure greater prevention of this type of disaster and impose more severe punitive measures on those responsible for this type of spill.
Galicia today faces “a double tide: a plastic tide and a tide of incompetence, concealment and lies on the part of the autonomous PP government,” denounced the Galician socialist MEP Nicolás González Casares in plenary session, in which he described it as “disastrous.” ” the management of the Xunta and has advocated for a change in the appointment before the polls on February 18.
The spill is “a catastrophe” and what has happened since then is “negligence”, Podemos MEP Idoia Villanueva has agreed. Ana Miranda, at whose request the debate was held on the last day of the Strasbourg plenary session, has also criticized the “inaction” of the Galician Government, which “took a month to activate alert 2, an obvious case of denial of the catastrophe.” This “bad management is not new, it reminds us of the Prestige“They have not learned anything,” he rebuked the popular MEPs, to whom he also demanded greater action in the EU in the face of a problem that “is not only Galician, it is also a European problem.”
“Gentlemen of the left, are you so nervous about reaping another electoral defeat?” replied the vice president of the European People's Party group, Dolors Montserrat, who has accused the left of trying to “win miserably with this crisis what they “He has been unable to win from the opposition.” At the same time, however, she has also once again attacked the national debate at European level with PP slogans: “If instead of pellets If there was an amnesty, and instead of Rueda there was Puigdemont, you would be acting without question, so quick to give in to the blackmail of a fugitive from justice, but so slow and irresponsible to lend a hand in a crisis that affects everyone.” , he has reproached. “This debate would not take place if there were no elections in February,” added the also popular Francisco Millán Mon.
For his part, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé has attacked all the parties for an “embarrassing spectacle” and has accused them of being interested only in the “electoral gain” of the crisis. “They don't give a damn about coastal protection, the real catastrophe is the destruction of the Spanish fishing sector that popular and socialists have promoted for the last 40 years by systematically executing foreign agendas,” denounced the deputy of the ultra party, to which the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has urged not to stand in the Galician elections so as not to put the absolute majority of the PP at risk.
Ribera criticizes the Xunta for “minimizing the toxicity” of the pellets
The third vice president of the Government and minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has criticized the Xunta de Galicia for having “minimized the risk, the toxicity” of the 'pellets' and subsequently “passing a list of media that do not there is no possibility of making it available to anyone.” “Fortunately it is a different contamination than that of the 'Prestige',” the minister said this Thursday. The minister considers that it is “fantastic” if one can face the problem alone but she criticizes
that, simultaneously, demands that others have to “invent a participation that is not stipulated in the protocols.” “Collaboration, transparency, debate and solutions based on cooperation are required for the problems we face,” he said.
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