RESOLUTION A3-0317/92

Resolution embodying the opinion of the European Parliament on the proposal from the Commission to the Council for a resolution on a Community Programme of Policy and Action in relation to the Environment and Sustainable Development

The European Parliament,

- having regard to the Commission proposal to the Council,

- having been consulted by the Council pursuant to Article 130s of the EEC Treaty (C3-0240/92),

- having regard to Articles 130r, 130s and 130t of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community,

- having regard to its resolutions on the four previous action programmes,

- having regard to its resolution of 10 May 1985 on protection of the environment in the Mediterranean,

- having regard to its resolution of 19 February 1986 on agriculture and the environment,

- having regard to the report by its Committee on Transport and Tourism on speed limits in the Community (A2-0115/86)

- having regard to its resolution of 11 September 1991 on transport and the environment,

- having regard to its resolution of 19 June 1987 on the waste disposal industry and old waste dumps,

- having regard to its opinion of 28 October 1987 on the proposal for a Council decision on a Community system of rapid exchange of information in cases of abnormal levels of radioactivity or a nuclear accident,

- having regard to its resolution of 16 June 1988 on the pollution of the Rhine,

- having regard to its resolution of 7 July 1988 on a policy for urban waste plastics,

- having regard to its resolution of 12 October 1988 on the quality of air in indoor environments,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 October 1988 on implementation of the CITES Regulation in the European Community,

- having regard to its resolution of 12 October 1988 on the implementation of the Berne Convention,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 October 1988 on the implementation of the directive on the conservation of wild birds in the European Community,

- having regard to its resolutions of 16 October 1988 on the environment in urban areas and 12 September 1991 on the urban environment,

- having regard to its resolution of 26 May 1989 on the consequences of a rapid rise in the sea level along Europe's coasts,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 July 1989 on the environment and mass tourism,

- having regard to its resolution of 25 October 1990 on the environmental problems in the Amazon region and the conservation of tropical forests,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 June 1991 on economic and fiscal instruments of environmental policy,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 June 1991 on energy and the environment,

- having regard to its resolution of 19 November 1991 on the need for pan-European parliamentary cooperation on the environment,

- having regard to its resolution of 8 April 1992 on the implementation of European Community environmental legislation,

- having regard to its resolution of 13 February 1992 on EEC participation in the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED),

- having regard to its resolution of 13 February 1992 on the need for a convention on the protection of forests,

- having regard to the resolution of the Council of Education Ministers of 24 May 1988 on environmental education,

- having regard to the declaration by the European Council in Dublin of 25-26 June 1990 on the environmental imperative,

- having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on 1 July 1992,

- having regard to the Council resolution of 26 May 1992,

- having regard to the report of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection and the opinions of the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology, the Committee on Transport and Tourism and the Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development (A3-0317/92),

- having regard to the result of the vote on the Commission proposal,

A. noting with concern the growing degradation of the environment on a global scale, which will require the Community to take further binding measures to reverse current trends in this area,

B. whereas the total interdependence of environmental, social, economic and health factors should be closely borne in mind when any decision is taken on Community policy,

C. whereas the European Council in Dublin of 25-26 June 1992 recognized its clear responsibility for dealing with this situation, which constitutes a grave threat to the survival of our planet and, consequently, to human life,

D. whereas this joint responsibility must be reflected in adoption by the Commission of laws setting high levels of protection and whereas the environmental dimension should form an integral part of the process of defining and implementing all other Community policies, as laid down in Articles 2 and 130r(2) of the new Treaty,

E. whereas this shared responsibility cannot be confined to declarations, conferences and speeches but must be translated into practical action, deeds, timetables and programmes backed up by the appropriate instruments,

F. whereas, particularly after the UN Conference on the Environment and Development, there is therefore an urgent need to give substance to and step up international cooperation in the area of environmental protection in order to find global solutions in this field, and whereas the Community must set up appropriate monitoring mechanisms and play a pioneering role in implementing and following up the results, irrespective of the conduct of other industrial nations.

G. whereas the industrialized countries have a clear ethical and moral obligation towards the developing countries,

H. whereas demographic pressure is and will increasingly be, in the decades to come, a further factor in environmental deterioration and will have a particularly adverse impact on the poorest peoples,

I. whereas a correct environmental policy should aim resolutely to achieve an economy which takes account of our planet's ecological capacity, and whereas the careful exploitation of natural resources is as important as the factors of capital and employment,

J. Whereas there must therefore be a profound change in the future Union's economic approach that takes account of the depletion and impairment of natural resources, places a positive value on the environmental assets of flora, fauna and the ecosystems, not covered by the market approach, and includes an ethical dimension, lacking in the Fifth Programme,

1. Welcomes, in principle, the guidelines set out in the Fifth Programme and in particular:

- the principles of precaution and of the inclusion of the environmental factor in any Community policy, which will for the first time, under the Treaty establishing the European Community, enable a global, coordinated policy to be established in this area,

- the incorporation of external environmental costs, and the use of economic instruments to supplement the panoply of legal instruments,

- the importance it attaches to the cooperation and participation of all agents and operators, on a par with the economic sectors,

- the principle of shared responsibility,

- extension of the directive on environmental impact assessments to all plans and programmes for action involving every policy,

- the decisive role it grants to national, regional and local government,

- the weight it gives to the public in general and especially to NGOs, although participation of this kind is still poorly covered in the various Tables,

- the importance which it attaches to the quality, evaluation and distribution of data on the environment,

- the serious self-criticism which the programme contains;

2. Expresses its wish that agreement be reached on a comprehensible and precise definition of what is meant by 'sustainable development' and of the concept of 'sustainability', and that this definition be applied sector by sector, in both quantitative and comparative terms, with the necessary attention and precision;

3. Calls on the Commission to take measures to ensure that all environmental costs are included in the cost price of products on the market, so as to prevent environmental dumping through concerted application of the 'polluter pays' principle, first and foremost in the Member States of the Community;

4. Calls on the Commission to establish clearly the mechanisms for interaction and the conciliation instruments necessary to ensure the effective participation of all political, economic and social operators and agents, NGOs, consumer associations and the general public, and deplores the fact that they were not consulted when the programme was being drawn up;

5. Calls on the Commission to draw up a set of regulations recognizing the right of associations to go to law;

6. Demands the active participation of workers in companies to discuss environmental issues and the appointment of a person responsible in each company, it being possible to combine this with other duties in smaller companies;

7. Considers that presentation by the Commission of an updated report on the state of the environment, in conjunction with the Fifth Programme, does not fulfil Parliament's repeated requests, in its above-mentioned resolutions on the Third and Fourth programmes, to the Commission to produce in due course a detailed review of the successes and failures of the previous four action programmes, the analysis of which would have been indispensable when drawing up the new programme, particularly in the light of the unsatisfactory results reflected in the Commission report;

8. Calls on the Commission to establish a procedure and appropriate mechanisms to ensure the application of the principle of the integration of the environmental dimension in other Community policies, and, to this end, to set up an interdepartmental committee to review and coordinate all the activities of the various Directorates-General, to ensure that their policies comply with this principle; and, at the same time, to ensure that the environmental dimension is incorporated in the establishment plans of all the directorates-General;

9. Urges the Commission to ensure that, each year, an assessment is made of the additional cost and environmental damage caused by the possible inadequate incorporation of Article 130r(2) in all other Community policies and that this assessment is submitted to Parliament;

10. Asks the Commission to ensure that the concept of sustainable development is included as a specific objective in the rules governing Community funds, particularly the Structural Funds, funds for development aid to third countries and the Cohesion Fund, and that it takes, in particular, the following form:

- the proposal - as part of alterations to the Funds' objectives - for new criteria for the allocation of appropriations, based on a redefinition of the regions and the adoption of new development indicators including factors relating to standard of living such as health, the environment, social life and education,

- priority funding for investments which aim to promote development from within the regions themselves, based on the judicious use of both human and environmental natural resources;

11. Calls on the Commission to ensure that the implementation of Community funds goes hand in hand with:

- greater transparency, by extending without delay the field of application of Directive 90/313 on the free access to information in the environmental field and by monitoring implementation of this directive henceforth,

- improved management, control and monitoring of all projects which have been allocated Community aid, in order to provide a genuine guarantee that optimum use is being made of Community financial resources, and, moreover, that the projects keep to their initial aims and comply with European law, particularly in the environmental field,

- strengthened direct links between the Commission and the regions, inter alia in the financial field, in the context of the creation of a Europe of the regions;

12. Calls on the Commission to instruct the European Environment Agency to draw up an annual report covering not only the application of Community law but also an environmental assessment of the use by the Member States of Community funds and policies, and requests that this report be submitted to the Council, Commission and Parliament;

13. Views with satisfaction the improvement in the preparation of Community legislation and particularly the incorporation of specific provisions for its implementation, and requests that there be a requirement to back up such provisions with a range of penalty payments, in the event of non-compliance, in accordance with Article 171 of the Treaty establishing the European Community; calls on the Commission to carry out a comparative survey of the Member States' criminal law in the environmental field, since it will become an important instrument of environmental protection and it seems useful to exchange information on the matter, and requests, therefore, that the survey be included in Table 17 and that information be exchanged in 1993;

14. Calls once again on the Commission to set up a Community Inspectorate to supervise the implementation of environmental law, since the setting up of a Consultative Forum, an Implementation Network and a Monitoring Group on environmental policy does not seem to be the most appropriate instrument for the purpose, given the possibility of overlapping responsibilities and the indefinite status of these groups;

15. Calls on the Commission to establish, in cases where Community legislation is not transposed into national legal provisions in due time, a system of Member States' responsibilities as recognized in the judgment of the Court of Justice of 19 November 1991;

16. Urges the Commission once again to redraft the text of the main Community directives in the light of the environment policy, since they have been repeatedly amended and the constant references to previous texts make them difficult to consult;

17. Asks the Commission to develop the principle that 'the user of natural resources pays' not only for accounting purposes or for its incentive or deterrent effect but also, more fundamentally, to encourage the rational use of such resources;

18. Calls on the Commission to review the 'polluter pays' principle in the light of the precautionary and preventive action principles laid down in the Treaty on European Union, since pollution can in no case be legitimized by a counter-payment;

19. Deplores the fact that the Commission has not endorsed the Task Force Report on the Environment and the Internal Market (1989), thus wasting valuable time in which the foundations could have been laid for measures to alleviate the serious environmental repercussions which completion of the single market will have and to which the Cecchini report did not draw attention;

20. Notes the importance of raising public awareness of the need to modify patterns of consumption, a task that will have to be taken on principally by the NGOs; considers, to this end, that it will be essential, in order to raise awareness not only among the public but also in some cases the Member States, for the Commission to place sufficient resources at the NGOs' disposal to finance public education campaigns and for the NGOs to form an essential part of each national delegation to the ESC;

21. Calls on the Commission to detail, as a basis for discussion on the 1993 budget and for the preparation of a medium-term financial forecast, the staff and financial resources which will be needed to allow the substantive proposals, reports and collections of data referred to in the Action programme to be presented within the requisite time-limits;

22. Urges the Commission to draw up a White Paper strengthening and updating the environmental measures and priorities together with the relevant timetables in the light of the functioning of the Internal Market and adequate implementation of the shared responsibility principle;

In the institutional sphere

23. Deplores the fact that Article 130s(2) of the Treaty on European Union excludes essential areas of environmental protection from the scope of the cooperation and codecision procedures, thus running the risk of jeopardizing the coherence and efficiency of the Community's environmental policy and the implementation of the Fifth programme;

24. Trusts, however, that Community environmental policy - particularly after the environmental requirements established at the Rio Conference have been incorporated - will not be endangered by the principle of subsidiarity;

25. Urges the Commission, therefore, to ensure that the Directorate-General for the Environment (DG XI) is consulted when any policy decision is taken, so as to safeguard the 'sustainability' of other Community policies, for which the Directorate-General will need to be allocated sufficient funds and personnel;

26. Calls on the Commission to take into account the results of the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro when implementing projects within the framework of the Fifth Environment Programme, or to propose wide-ranging measures for the European Community, particularly where air pollutants, substances harmful to the climate and water pollution are concerned; and regrets that the Commission failed to meet the deadline established at the European Council in Dublin, and was thus late in presenting this programme, as a result of which the Community institutions were unable to study it and make an assessment before the above Conference;

27. Asks the Commission to ensure, when the Fifth Programme is reviewed, i.e. at the end of 1995, that the co-decision procedure is applied for the period 1996-2000 as laid down in Article 189b of the new Treaty;

In the sphere of nature conservancy and the protection of natural resources

28. Expresses its wish for nature conservancy and the reassessment of natural resources to be a priority concern in this programme, for other sectors to be clearly coordinated with this objective, particularly following the adoption at the UNCED of Article 10(a) of the Convention on Biodiversity, and for nature conservancy to be included in Chapter 14;

29. Calls on the Commission, therefore, to:

- establish a calendar setting out objectives for the reduction of all gases which contribute to the greenhouse effect, submit proposals for modification of existing legislation and, in particular, for bringing up to date the directive on large incineration plants, as explicitly laid down in Article 4(2), and include those proposals in Table 9;

- coordinate more efficiently policies relating to the use of the soil (the CAP, forestry, transport, energy, tourism, the Structural Funds, etc.) and in particular assume its responsibilities with regard to compliance with the directives on birds and habitats; create a pan-European network of extensive natural and quasi-natural biotopes and ecosystems requiring protection and include this in Table 10;

- increase the funds allocated to the protection of nature which are still inadequate, despite the increase in LIFE and other funds;

- apply strictly Article 4(2) of the CITES and demand irrefutable scientific proof before export that trade is not harmful to the species concerned;

- include specific references to fisheries, since marine ecosystems are being severely damaged as a result of current fisheries policy;

- establish as a matter of urgency an integrated Community policy for the protection and rehabilitation of coastal regions and ensure that measures are taken to preserve stretches of coastline which are still unspoilt by bringing forward the date specified in Tables 13 and 17;

- draw up a Community soil protection policy to combat, inter alia, erosion and desertification;

- carry out a programme of data collection and assessment on soil pollution, to be included in Table 10, in which context the urgency of the measures taken must depend on the degree of pollution and the priorities on the nature of the resource which is being protected;

- take immediate action to limit the use and consumption of water resources, carefully regulating the use of ground waters (over-use, leakages and losses from water mains, irrigation systems, etc.) and to impose a levy on water consumption;

- set a calendar for achieving a zero rate for emissions of nitrates, phosphates, pesticides and other pollutants;

In the various sectors

30. Calls on the Commission, in accordance with the principle set out in the Fifth Programme, namely to 'strike a new balance between the short-term benefit of individual persons, companies and administrations or bodies and the longer-term benefits of society as a whole', to:

- set clear levels and targets for securing maximum environmental protection, and for this purpose establish the necessary table, as in other sectors;

- issue operating licences requiring companies to apply the concept of 'integrated pollution control' for each of the production cycles, including the prevention of waste production;

- introduce in a clear fashion the concept of responsibility for damaging the environment;

- grant fiscal advantages and incentives to companies which apply practices that respect the environment and have been subject to environmental inquiries;

- ensure that access to public funding for individual companies is conditional on compliance with environmental law;

- ensure that any company participating in Community research programmes should first be subject to an environmental inquiry;

- submit proposals for emission standards for all relevant industrial sectors in respect of the substances contained in lists I and II, depending on the level of technology, and include them in Tables 9 and 11;

- make efforts to ensure that the economic sectors, companies, technologies and products covered by the sustainable development plan for Europe and the planet are competitive;

- take measures to enable the European Community to attain independence in the disposal of waste and hazardous waste before the year 2000 and, to this end, persuade the Member States, in particular, to set up the necessary number of rubbish tips and waste incineration plants, since this is the only way of effectively stopping exports of waste, and to include all this in Table 14;

- in reducing air pollution, take steps to enforce reduction measures in all the Member States, present, step by step, proposals for emission standards for all the relevant industrial sectors and place less emphasis on air quality standards; in this connection, the updating of the directive on large incineration plants is of particular importance;

- adopt the necessary measures to enable the Community, in accordance with the proximity principle, to attain self-sufficiency in waste disposal and recycling, and to impose a ban on the export of hazardous waste for purposes of disposal and recycling outside the European Economic Area;

31. Calls, in particular:

- for the allocation of public expenditure in the research and technological development sector to meet, as a priority, social and environmental requirements conducive to sustainable development;

- for the Commission to make a greater commitment in the following fields:

. more rational energy use and production of renewable energy;

. environmental protection and clean and economical use of raw materials;

. development and use of clean technologies;

Energy sector

32. Calls on the Commission to:

- set targets for CO2 emissions in each sector;

- take steps to implement PACE, SAVE and other programmes for improving energy efficiency and increasing energy saving, and include these steps in Tables 2 and 7:

- propose that part of the revenue from the new energy tax be channelled into a worldwide fund to help countries with a transitional economy (in Eastern Europe) and developing countries (in the southern hemisphere) to meet their CO2 reduction targets;

- submit a directive by 1993 developing the principle of 'lease cost planning';

- ensure that the taxation system (which must also include an assessment of risks) is applied to all non-renewable energies, including nuclear power;

- finance and promote research into and the application of renewable energy sources, with maximum fiscal incentives;

- recognize that nuclear power is expensive and unsuitable for solving energy problems, because of the risk it poses both to human safety and the global environment, particularly when the problem of disposal and definitive storage of waste remains unresolved;

- adopt immediate measures to remedy the most pressing safety defects of nuclear reactors and make plans for the prompt decommissioning of the most dangerous nuclear reactors, and include these measures in Table 16;

- present comparative data on background radioactivity and the exposure of the public to radiation from that source, harmonize the measuring and calculation procedures used in the Member States, draw up a programme for carrying out and guaranteeing the quality of radioactivity measurements and include this in Table 16 for 1993;

- encourage the Member States to improve public information, and dialogue with the public, in the nuclear energy field;

Transport sector

33. Calls on the Commission to:

- promote public transport and ensure that all individual modes of transport assume their own economic, social and environmental costs;

- adopt a policy giving precedence to rail transport and transport by inland waterway over road transport by making the latter pay its own infrastructure and maintenance costs;

- promote maximum energy efficiency in the case of aircraft;

- integrate and coordinate its regional, planning and transport policies in order to minimize any unnecessary increase in travel and transport use and include these considerations in Table 3;

- ensure that environmental impact assessments carried out prior to work on any new infrastructure also take account of the environmental impact of the traffic increase on the environment, particularly in urban areas;

- bring the time-frame set out in Table 3 forward to 1993;

Agricultural sector

34. Calls on the Commission to:

- make environmental protection a central objective of the CAP, in accordance with Parliament's numerous resolutions on CAP reform, and encourage, in particular, programmes for individual areas in support of environmentally friendly agricultural practices and subsidy by unit of surface area in the interests of nature conservancy; and include this assistance in Tables 4 and 10;

- draw up a Code of Conduct in which 'sound agricultural practice' is defined in such a way that farming methods based on this code do not speed up the process of soil erosion, or pollute the soil, the water and the air; serious violations of this Code of Conduct shall be penalized by the withdrawal of agricultural aid for the holding concerned;

- taking into account certain legal limits, control environmental pollution caused by agriculture - which occurs as a result of intensive agricultural production methods - by fiscal measures such as 'external environmental costs';

- ensure that, whilst State intervention measures in production and marketing practised hitherto require Community-wide harmonization when borders are open, rewards for farmers who carry out environmentally useful tasks (maintenance of biotopes and the land) can be supplemented at regional level and the concept of subsidiarity can therefore be made applicable to agricultural policy;

- incorporate organic farming in its reform of the CAP through specific structural and financial measures covering not only prices, the promotion of agriculture and the marketing of products but also structural guidance policy;

- draw up an integrated European regional planning policy which supports the ecological balance of the rural environment, and ensure that all the authorities involved participate in such a policy;

- take steps to create new forests and regenerate existing ones, favouring the most environmentally friendly methods (slow-growing trees, mixed afforestation), provided that this does not detract from other environmental aims, such as the preservation of areas of great ecological importance; and alter Table 4 to take account of this;

- draw up a European agri-feedingstuffs policy based on quality and consumer health;

- create a network to monitor soil, air and water pollution;

- improve farmers' training and information with regard to ecological farming methods;

- adopt a comprehensive climatological programme to combat the greenhouse effect in which appropriations shall be set aside to reward the ecological use of sustainable forestry and reafforestation in appropriate locations, whereby technical measures to reduce CO2 emissions and reafforestation to break down CO2 should be promoted equally;

- allocate every year for the measures (agro-environmental and forestry) accompanying the CAP reform budgetary appropriations to make a significant impact on the balanced and dynamic development of the rural areas of the Community;

Tourist sector

35. Calls on the Commission to:

- delimit the tourist reception capacity in each coastal tourist resort, and to ensure that this fixing of limits also applies to ski resorts;

- draw up a programme for a general strategy covering both leisure time and short breaks in recreational establishments located either on the outskirts of cities or in urban areas and easily accessible from all directions; and include this measure in Table 5;

- ensure that scarce areas of unspoilt coastline and vulnerable mountain regions are fully protected;

- provide special protection for islands, whose fragile ecosystems cannot cope with mass tourism, much less with the casual building of yacht marinas for seasonal recreational purposes;

- ensure that the directive on environmental impact assessment is extended to cover any tourist project whether it affect the coast, harbours, townscape, countryside or mountain regions;

- draw up by 1993 a set of Community rules listing all tourist activities harmful to the environment;

- ensure that aircraft are not permitted to take off or land at night, so as not to disturb people's rest;

- ensure that every visitor to every tourist centre is charged a standard tax as a way of financing the environmental upkeep and rehabilitation of tourist resorts;

In the sphere of international cooperation

36. Calls on the Commission to incorporate an environmental code in all international trading agreements;

37. Calls on the Commission to appoint an officer responsible for environmental policy on each delegation with third countries with which the EC maintains relations;

38. Calls also for close cooperation with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the legislative sphere, the exchange of data and technology and the field of training, so as to overcome the environmental crisis in these countries, and expresses its particular satisfaction at the drafting, under the guidance of the Commission, of an environmental action programme for Central and Eastern Europe, which is to be adopted at the end of 1992 or the beginning of 1993 at the next meeting of the Environment Ministers ('Environment for Europe');

39. Calls on the Commission to take measures to ensure that all the Community Member States ratify as soon as possible the convention signed in Espoo under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Europe on environmental impact assessments in a transborder context;

40. Calls for measures regarding the Mediterranean coastal states concerning:

- the establishment of a central authority as a branch of the European Environment Agency, in which all Mediterranean non-member states should cooperate, in order to deal effectively with the serious political, environmental, demographic and other threats facing this region;

- the application of the equivalence principle to trade in products and technologies dangerous to the environment and the health of human beings and animals;

41. Requests, with regard to the developing countries, a new direction in development cooperation policy based on the objectives of economic development and environmental protection, which will enable developing countries to achieve economic autonomy, and therefore calls for:

- debt rescheduling and cancellation measures with the aim of protecting the environment;

- the establishment of technical cooperation, the transfer of cleaner and more efficient technologies and the transfer of technical know-how;

- the establishment of a system of fair trading prices which take social and ecological costs into account;

- a contribution to the essential process of converting the agricultural sector, through appropriate financial support, to enable the cultivation of food crops to get under way again and help achieve self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs;

- cooperation on education and information policy, with the participation of the NGOs;

- the establishment of an environment fund which will be used only to finance projects which respect natural resources and the environment:

42. Regrets that the Commission has not given more attention to the problem of demographic trends which, in many fields, underlie worldwide environmental changes, and calls on the Commission to help to resolve this problem within international bodies;

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43. Calls on the Council to:

- agree once and for all to take on the development and implementation of this Fifth Programme, since past experience shows that delays in decision-making are largely due to exclusively national criteria and interests, ignoring the over-arching dimension of Community environmental policy, which is tantamount to contradicting the mandate laid down in this area by the Dublin European Council and unequivocally included in the Fifth Programme;

- ensure that the content of its meetings accordingly benefits from total transparency, in accordance with the principle of co-responsibility adopted in this programme and with Parliament's repeated requests in this regard, also complying with Directive 90/313/EEC;

- notify Parliament, whenever necessary, of its grounds or reasons for not adopting or implementing any of the measures, instruments or timetables laid down in any of the sectors covered by the Fifth Programme;

- remove the obstacles preventing agreement on the designation of the seat of the European Environment Agency, since the idea of a 'peripatetic' or 'floating' seat is clearly unacceptable as the application and control of the Fifth Programme would, yet again, be no more than wishful thinking;

44. Considers Volume II 'Towards Sustainability - a European Community Programme of Policy and Action in relation to the Environment and Sustainable Development' to be part of this resolution and calls, therefore, for the Tables in Part II to be amended in line with the preceding paragraphs;

45. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council and the Member States.