Clean water: Christian Democrats Want To Shift Costs Onto Citizens!

Ahead of today’s plenary debate on the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, Jutta Paulus, environmental policy spokesperson for the Greens/EFA Group, negotiator for her group on the related motion for a resolution and a trained pharmacist, states:

“It is completely unacceptable that the EPP now wants to halt the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive that it previously approved. Those who pollute water must pay for it – not we citizens.

At a time of rising living costs, high fuel prices and an increasingly expensive everyday life, it is the wrong approach for the EPP to place even more burden on people. Many are already standing at the gas station and in the supermarkets wondering how they can afford it all – and now water bills are set to rise as well, just to shield large corporations.

Extended producer responsibility ensures that pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies cover the costs of removing medicinal residues and other micropollutants from wastewater. Suspending this would leave our cities and municipalities – and ultimately all of us – to shoulder billions in costs alone. That is neither fair nor responsible.

Fears of medicine shortages or market distortions are nothing but scaremongering. The directive provides sufficient flexibility, including for generic manufacturers, and successfully combines health protection with environmental protection.

Those who now speak of competitive disadvantages ignore the fact that cost coverage applies to all companies operating in the European market, regardless of where they produce. Extended producer responsibility finally delivers fairness: the polluters pay, not citizens.

A ‘stop-the-clock’ procedure would delay urgently needed investment in clean water. Clean water is a fundamental right – and no industry should be allowed to evade its responsibility.”