In a hearing before the European Parliament's environment committee last week, Stavros Dimas said he was “ready to fulfill the call made by the previous Parliament in March this year and ban all landfills by the year 2025”.
The current European Commission's five-year term comes to an end on November 1, 2004, and before the new executive body of the European Union can take up its duties, the commissioners must gain European Parliament approval.
Mr Dimas has been nominated to take over as environment commissioner from Margot Wallstrom. Mr Dimas, 63, hails from Athens and is a former Greek government minister with a background in law and economics.
Several MEPs raised concerns at the hearing that Mr Dimas had not mentioned waste management as a priority in his written answers to the committee. The European Parliament wants to see a phased-in landfill ban as part of the forthcoming EU Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Dimas replied that the landfill ban would be his goal, “even though in many Member States it would be very difficult”.
The commissioner-designate pledged that during his term, he would present Parliament and the Council of Ministers with a revision of the framework directive on waste.
Doubts
Commenting after the hearing, committee members expressed some doubts about Mr Dimas's qualifications to be environment commissioner, and his commitment to environmental protection.
The committee's vice-president, Finnish Green MEP Satu Hassi, said: “We need a strong environment commissioner who will act as a determined lobbyist for the environment and can stand up to strong pressure from industry. We find it hard to take on trust that Dimas will acquire the necessary qualifications by learning on the job.”
The Greek member of the environment committee, Dimitrios Papadimoulis, said: “He did not display any real commitment to environmental protection. We all know that this is potentially a very serious problem in a Commission which pays constant lip-service to finding a balance between economic and environmental protection objectives and invariably prioritises short-term economic goals.
However, the Parliament's socialist group, PSE, said they would accept Mr Dimas as environment commissioner despite warning that many of his plans seemed to be “too vague”. Socialist spokesman Jan Wiersma said: “Mr Dimas has been put on notice. He knows our concerns and we look forward to seeing these being addressed.”
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