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Risk Governance and the Precautionary Principle: Recent Cases in the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) Committee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jo Leinen
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Extract

As parliamentarians it is our job to represent the people of Europe and to make laws that are in the people's best interest. This sounds simple at a first glance, but it is not as simple when you think about it twice. A law might be in the interest of the people now, because it has known positive effects in the short term. But sometimes the very same law might bear a risk in the long-term, especially for future generations, and sometimes we can't even tell yet how big that risk is. If we would follow a short-sighted approach which only aims at the expected positive effects without taking into account actual and potential adverse effects that might occur in the future, we would act irresponsibly towards the generations of our children and grandchildren. That is why risk governance and the precautionary principle rightfully play a major role in the daily work of the legislator.

Type
Symposium on the European Parliament’s Role in Risk Governance
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 169 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Communication from the Commission on the precautionary principle, 2 February 2000, COM(2000)1 final, p. 2.

2 Note that in the Treaties only a “high” (not e.g. “the highest possible”) level of protection is codified without giving further specifications. This gives a certain margin of discretion for the legislator to determine the desired level of protection.

3 See Art. 1 (3) of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and the Council concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), OJ 2007 L 136/3: “This Regulation is based on the principle that it is for manufacturers, importers and downstream users to ensure that they manufacture, place on the market or use such substances that do not adversely affect human health or the environment. Its provisions are underpinned by the precautionary principle.”

4 See Position of the European Parliament adopted at second reading on 19 January 2012 with a view to the adoption of Regulation (EU) No …/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the making available on the market and use of biocidal products, P7_TC2-COD(2009)007: Definition of nanomaterials: Art. 3 (1) z), separate assessment: Art. 19 (1) f), labelling: Art. 58 (3) d) and Art. 69 (2) b), regular review and update: Art. 65 (3) d).

5 Here the importance of the principle of subsidiarity in European Law should be emphasized. It is enshrined in Art. 5 (3) TEU and lays down the general requirements for the EU to act in areas that don't fall under its exclusive competence: “Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.”

6 Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council on genetically modified food and feed, OJ 2003 L 268/1.

7 Robert F. Kennedy, “Address at University of Kansas”, Lawrence, Kansas, 18 March 1968, quoted from Lowenstein, George, “That Which Makes Life Wothwile”, in Krueger, Alan B. (ed.), Measuring the Subjective Well-Being of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 87 et sqq., at p. 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Currently a number of international organizations and countries are working to establish such a comprehensive welfare index, e.g. the German Bundestag created a special advisory group (Enquete-Kommission „Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität“), also other countries, the OECD, the UN and the Worldbank are in different stages of developing indices.

9 Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 of the European Parliament and the Council of 6 July 2011 on European environmental economic accounts, OJ 2011 L 192/1.