This month I finally unravelled the question of whether new EU legislation on dangerous substances is going to silence church organs. One of the penalties of being an MEP is that from time to time the press - usually the British press - get hold of a scare story and run hard with it for a bit. Then they drop it and silence falls. When eventually it is proved that the scare is just a scare they never print the outcome. So this is an attempt for once to give you the end of the story. Let me explain.

 

Shortly before the last European elections I came under heavy pressure, as Chairman of the Environment Committee, from enthusiastic colleagues, the Commission and the country then acting as President of the EU. They all wanted new environmental laws adopted as fast as possible, because otherwise the elections would delay them. At issue were draft directives on the testing and approval of chemicals; on the recycling of household batteries; on the recycling of electronic waste (known as the WEEE directive), and (accompanying it) on the restriction of hazardous substances (known as the RoHS directive). I had to give way on WEEE and RoHS but held firm on the others. I could foresee lots of trouble with implementation and costs if we went too fast. I was right. The twin laws, WEEE and RoHS, were adopted in great haste, and with little knowledge of the probable impact.

 

Now we find that all countries are having difficulty in lining up the electronic equipment manufacturers in order to get their co-operation in setting up systems for the collection of electronic waste; meanwhile local authorities are concerned that they will have to pay some of the collection costs, which should fall entirely on producers. Small retailers are worried about the cost to them of the obligation to take back old irons, toasters etc that they may not have sold in the first place. And there is the question of precisely what RoHS covers. It bans such substances as lead, cadmium and mercury from electrical items, but how widely does the ban in fact apply?

 

This led to the idea, fostered by enthusiastic journalists, that church organs, being dependent on electric motors, could very broadly be defined as covered by the directive, so the lead in their organ pipes would have to go. Thus a poorly drafted directive, if taken to the ultimate in a “what if” scenario, offered the classic EU threat not only to the use of lead to repair old organ pipes, but to the building of new pipes in the traditional material. This was a possibility never raised in our parliamentary debates. So I contacted the Commission and the UK Department of Trade. No reply from the latter but the Commissioner for the Environment, Mr Dimas, replied as follows: “The aim of the Directive is to protect human health and the environment from certain hazardous substances, including lead in electric and electronic equipment. Given the widespread use of electrically powered or controlled components in products, the scope of the directive is wide. My services are constantly reviewing borderline cases However it is clearly not the intention to cover every single piece of equipment that somehow uses electricity…Having assessed the views of a large number of Member States, we are of the opinion that pipe organs installed in churches, concert halls etc do not constitute “Consumer Equipment” in the sense of Category 4 of the WEEE directive. Accordingly they are not within the scope of the RoHS directive and no exemptions are needed. I can confirm that the RoHS directive does not apply to existing organs (i.e. put on the market before July 2006) nor to the use of lead for future repairs to their pipes”.

It took us another week and several thumb screws to extract from the Commission that the law does not apply to new church organs either. And they haven’t even started work on musical socks yet.

 

And yet a survey in June showed that environmental issues were top of the  hit parade of issues that most people (86% in the survey) thought should be the subject of EU laws (tax and cultural issues were at the bottom of the list). What we forget is that, to be effective, laws on the environment, like those promoting the Common Market, are bound to be extremely complex. MEPs’ work is unglamorous partly because we have to spend so much time disentangling stories like the one I have told you above.

 

One way to make sure that Member States implement such demanding new legislation is to make their commitment to it very public. Conservative MEPs have always argued that the adoption of new EU laws in the Council of Ministers should take place in public. This month our government, having pursued the call for transparency with some enthusiasm hitherto, was the only one to oppose opening up all Council meetings to public view. Mrs Beckett was slated for this but I have some sympathy with her. What we need is the TV cameras present in the final session when countries sign on the dotted line. Then they can be held to their public commitment. Televising all the Council meetings will simply mean that the negotiations that matter move into the shadows of the ghastly Council building.

 

The highlights of the parliamentary session in Strasbourg included a debate on the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention centre. This was well-informed because a delegation of MEPs had just returned from there, including Conservative MEP James Elles. He was told that there are currently 319 detainees who are identified as “enemy combatants” and are judged too dangerous to release. James concluded that “Having visited Guantanamo I now feel that if you close this detention centre, what is going to happen to these dangerous people? If they are released it is probably going to make he war on terror worse, rather than better.” He reports that the favourite reading material in the camp library is Harry Potter.

 

We approved a £30 billion EU research programme this month, some of which will go to controversial stem cell research in the countries that allow it. We also had two environment debates, on a new law on groundwater quality and on a scheme to make environmental data more freely available. The latter is worrying the Ordnance Survey whose arrangements as a state agency able to charge the public for its maps etc are unique in the EU. Some other countries charge very high prices for any access to their data and the drive to completely free access imperils the OS position. I am working to preserve the status quo – a good position for a Conservative.