Commission to name and shame city sewage culprits
In a bid to get the EU Member States to enforce Community environmental policy more rigorously, the Environment Commissioner Margöt Wallstrom is launching a 'name and shame' initiative starting with a seminar on the EU's urban waste water directive. According to the Commission, the vast majority of Member States show major delays in implementing this Directive, ten years after its adoption. No less than 37 large cities still discharge untreated waste water into the environment, and many others are still discharging large quantities of effluent after inadequate treatment, reports the Commission. It also complains that the Member States are slow to provide the Commission with information on treatment of sewage from cities in their countries. Now Commissioner Wallström wants to convey the message that this is unacceptable. 'The environment of the EU would look different if legislation was enforced in the Member States,' she says. 'Waste water treatment, for example, makes the difference between good health and bad bathing water and thereby directly effects people's health. Member States are also setting a bad example to the candidate countries, which are being criticised for not transposing EU environmental legislation quickly enough.' The Commission's 'name, shame and fame' seminars, which kick off this week, are one of the tools announced under the Sixth environmental action programme to increase awareness of the effects of poor implementation of Community law.