Protection of East-West environment

Recommendation 1145 (1991)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

Assembly debate on 1 February 1991 (26th Sitting) (see Doc. 6371, report of the Committee on the Environment, Regional Planning and Local Authorities, Rapporteur : Mr Ruffy). Text adopted by the Assembly on 1 February 1991 (26th Sitting).

Thesaurus

1. The Assembly took note with satisfaction of the outcome of the 1st pan-European Parliamentary Conference on the Protection of East-West Environment, held in Vienna from 23 to 26 October 1990.

2. It joins the conference delegates in thanking the Austrian authorities, in particular the Federal Chancellor, Mr Franz Vranitzky, for inviting the Assembly to hold the conference in Vienna.

3. It welcomes the fact that the attendance bore witness to the pan-European dimension of the conference which made a major contribution to the achievement of the CSCE objectives and provided a practical example of the role a parliamentary assembly can play if it embraces all Europe in the search for solutions to environmental problems, which are a serious challenge to the continent as a whole.

4. It also observes that the views expressed on the main issues raised at the Vienna conference, as set out in the final declaration, are in keeping with the ideas and approaches which the Assembly set forth only recently in Recommendation 1131 on the environment policy in Europe (1988-89) and Recommendation 1130 on the formulation of a European charter and a European convention on environmental protection and sustainable development.

5. It notes that the Vienna conference stated in its conclusions that the environment of the continent of Europe is a single entity, at least as far as its main components - air and water, but also the soil - are concerned. This implies that any action to combat pollution and protect the environment should be pan-European in scope and be part of a coherent overall plan based on principles shared by the whole of Europe.

6. It affirms the role and vocation, in this area, of the Council of Europe, which was not only the first European organisation to take an interest in the various aspects of the European environment (see European Conservation Year in 1970, a major event), but is now ideally suited, because of its geographical make-up and the variety of its working instruments, to co-ordinating and devising strategies for the protection of the environment in Europe.

7. Accordingly, it endorses the proposal to the effect that a pan-European committee on the environment be set up as soon as possible, and has decided to commit itself to the establishment of such a committee and to give more detailed consideration to its working arrangements and membership, on the understanding that it should include both parliamentary and government representatives and provide a platform for governmental international organisations that are already active in the environment field in Europe.

8. The Assembly recommends that the Committee of Ministers :

8.1 completely overhaul its policy regarding the Council of Europe's programmes and administrative structure in the light of developments in the Central and East European countries and the Assembly's recent recommendations (in particular, Recommendations 1108, 1130 and 1131), so as to adapt the programmes and structure to the wider role which the Organisation is to play throughout Europe in regional planning, management of the environment, nature conservation and the preservation of the historical heritage and thus fulfil the new members' expectations in this area ;

8.2 appoint an ad hoc committee of national experts and senior officials responsible for the environment, nature conservation and regional planning to prepare, initially, a draft charter of spatial planning and environmental protection in Europe, based on Assembly Recommendation 1130, but taking also into account the ‘‘European conservation strategy'' (adopted by the Ministers of the Environment in Brussels in October 1990), the European Regional Planning Charter (Torremolinos Charter, adopted by the CEMAT in 1984) and the draft international ecological charter presented by the Austrian Federal Chancellor at the Vienna conference, and involve the Parliamentary Assembly in the committee's work ;

8.3 substantially improve the resources of the Naturopa Centre and give it the means to provide the assistance and documentation wanted, in particular, by the Central and East European countries and to make a bigger contribution to education, training and public awareness policies in the environment field ;

8.4 invite the Social Development Fund of the Council of Europe to consider taking emergency action in ecological disaster areas ;

8.5 take practical steps to promote the international protection of watercourses and adopt the Council of Europe draft convention without delay, or arrange for the draft pan-European convention being prepared by the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) in Geneva to be completed, at the latest, in time for the 1992 session of the Helsinki II Conference.