European capitalism unites against the
The very first victim of the capitalist unification of Europe brought about by the single European market in 1992 will be the environment. Even now, the environmental policy of the European Community is governed by the straightforward principle of accepting the national regulations least disruptive to free enterprise, setting the least stringent norms which authorize the highborder controls and ecology regulations still set at the lowest common denominator, the possibility of more favourable "isolated national rules" and the pressure that these could exert on the Community will be as limited as by bi-
The "European Environment Bureau", an association of ecological groupings of the European Community has recently published examples of the threat of worsening pollution: France's withdrawal from the agreement of the council of ministers of the Community on exhaust fumes from private cars;
the statements of the Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice against the Danish government's request for a ban on non-returnable bottles;
and the objections of the EEC Commission to the expected ban in Italy of
Even if part of Europe is still today in a position to protect itself against the
THIES GLEISS environment est levels of pollution. With the "free common market"
or tri-lateral agreements.
plastic packaging.
", the suppression of
130 International Marxist Review import of radioactive food products; if certain states still uphold strict norms on radioactivity after Chernobyl; if chemically treated foods are only admitted on part of the Community's territory, this will all change for the worse in the Community as a whole. The unfettered movement of goods within the EEC will take place according to the laws of competition at the expense of ecological responsibility, recommended norms and environmental compatibility. The average level which the populations will have to accept will be set by the major polluters.
But this is only the legal aspect of the opening of the European market. For years, the bourgeois press has been keeping us in suspense with "ecological scandals" '. There are three major groups of crimes against the environment. The first is the adulteration of foods. This "classic crime" of capitalist food production is today very well organized and carried out at an industrial level. Poisoned wine, veal injected with hormones and contaminated oil are only the most famous cases. This practice goes on beyond borders and with the most modern methods and technology. Crimes against the environment The second group of crimes against the environment is more extensive. It is the evasion of laws concerning the use of chemical products, the elimination of waste, and exceeding the maximum permitted quantities of toxic matter emitted during production. In West Germany alone almost 20,000 violations concerning pollution are recorded annually. For the most part, they are infractions of rules on the elimination of waste. Almost 85% of these crimes escape condemnation. But the real number of unrecorded pollution crimes is far greater. The former ecologist minister of the environment of Hesse, Joschka Fischer, resigned himself to stating that a small ministry of the environment has no power against the corresponding ecology bureaus of the major chemical trusts. And this is just as true for other European states and trusts. For example, at the time of the "veal injected with hormones scandal", the minister responsible from North Rhineland-Westphalia was obliged to use the research laboratories belonging to the hormone producers.
In the shadow of the large factories are thousands of small firms polluting the water, the air and the soil. Trailing behind the major environmental polluters is a whole industry camouflaging the damage. Toxic wastes are moved all over the place (in this sphere dependent and Eastern blo countries have recently been subject to brutal exploitation), chemical waste is fraudulently mixed or stored secretly, the appearance of poisoned foods is illegally altered
and re-sold. These two forms of criminality against the environment will increase in a Western Europe with no controls and will be more difficult to detect. What has been newly termed "toxic waste tourism"
presently the object of secret talks and discussions in the EEC with the express directive that without valid solutions, huge problems will result from
According to calculations by Greenpeace, the OECD states dump 20 million tons of toxic waste annually in a completely irrational manner. So there is a real danger that with a free internal market certain "toxic waste centres" will be created in Europe for storage, incineration and concentration for export. There is also a greater danger of blackmail. For example the Kronos-Titan society in
West Germany has publicly announced that it would relocate in a neighbouring country if the federal government prohibited it from continuing to dump so-called strongly diluted acids in the North Sea. The pressure of jobs, financial problems or simply so-called technical "know-how" may aggravate pollution considerably thanks to the free European circulation of capital.
We will not discuss the third group of pollution crimes: accidents in industrial, chemical or nuclear buildings, during transport or handling. They will continue to endanger the populations. Their dangers are as well known as the great negligence of officials of these enterprises and the pressures exerted to
Independently of the changes resulting from the single European market, great and growing environmental pollution will continue to poison Europe. The people of Europe will continue to be threatened by 107 nuclear reactors, not to mention 45 reactors presently under construction or already ordered. They are spread out over seven out of twelve EEC countries (Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Luxembourg do not have nuclear power stations). The EEC commission responsible for the Euratom treaty "to establish directives for nuclear programmes, encouraging initiative and development concordant with nuclear energy", continues imperturbably to count on the development of the nuclear programme, even after the Chernobyl catastrophe. It goes without saying that this is against the clearly expressed wishes of the majority of the
In a post-Chernobyl questionnaire about the continuation of the construction of nuclear power stations, the populations came out against it, in the following proportions: Great Britain, 83%; Italy, 79%; West Germany, 69%;
1992.
infringe safety regulations for reasons of profit.
The problems remain population.
European capitalism unites against the environment 131 for example, is
132 International Marxist Review France, 59%. The present plans of the Commission forecast that 40% of total energy production will be by nuclear power in 1995 (it is 26.6% today). In the year 2,000, nuclear energy will have surpassed 50%. If this percentage is not reached, which is quite foreseeable, it will be because of the resistance of the population which is still very active in Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany. But even more so because of false economic and technological estimations. Even now, France, West Germany and Belgium have at their disposal a huge overcapacity of electrical energy production. More specifically, Electricité de France is trying to sell its overcapacity of 19,000 megawatts, which correspond almost exactly to the capacity of the 16 nuclear stations installed since 1972. It wants to make these sales, with regular supplies for interconnected networks, to neighbouring countries in order to pay off its debt of 32 billion dollars. The technology of the fast-breeder reactor foreseen in EEC planning has proved to be leading to a dead end and is only being pursued for military reasons, especially the French Super-Phoenix.
The scandal of nuclear waste on the European level, showing how the nuclear managers and German, French, Belgian functionaries form a veritable mafia, drew attention last year to two major potential dangers. First, there is still no technical or political solution to the problem of the elimination of waste. Secondly, Europe, including the states with no nuclear power stations, is covered by a very dense network of mortally dangerous nuclear transport. Seas and forests dying With or without Europe, the forests are dying. According to an estimation at the end of 1986, 14% of European forests (including Eastern Europe) are affected. This corresponds to a surface area as large as East Germany and Austria combined (19.3 million hectares). Inside European borders, the percentage of diseased forests is the following: West Germany, 52%; Luxembourg, 51%; the Netherlands, 50%; France, 25%; and Belgium, 18%. Every year 6 million tons of sulphur rain down on Europe. This is released into the atmosphere by electrical power and town heating schemes (56%), factories (28%), residences (13%) and cars (3%). Moreover, each country gets the pollution of its neighbours. In Britain, Spain, France and West Germany, the exports of toxic products exceed the imports. The situation is just as bad with nitrogen oxides, 45% of which come from road traffic. The mix of sulphur and nitrogen oxides with other toxic materials, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons, is destroying more than just the forests. The lakes are polluted with acid, the danger of smog is on the increase, and, in the long run, the climate is threatened by the
European capitalism unites against the environment 133 greenhouse eifect, whose effect is worsened by carbon dioxide.
The situation concerning water pollution in Europe is not much better. Everyone knows that the North Sea has become the European dumping ground. Each year the surrounding states dump 4 billion cubic meters of unfiltered sewage. Add to this 75 million tons of construction waste, 65 million tons of dredged material, 7 million tons of toxic waste in liquid or solid form, 5 million tons of sewage sludge, 1.5 million tons of nitrogen compounds, 200,000 tons of oil, 200,000 tons of phosphates and a few million tons of insecticides, pesticides and solvents. It rains 11,000 tons of lead, 350 tons of cadmium, 100 tons of mercury. Not to mention all the particles in the air and radioactive waste from the nuclear re-processing centres in The Hague and Sellafield.
For other surface waters, the pollution by chemical products and by sewage was partly checked by a large number of EEC directives and agreements. Unfortunately the situation for underground water has got worse. Contrary to all the statements over the years by the "experts", almost all this underground water is poisoned by plant "protection" — insecticides and pesticides. The presence of nitrates is constantly growing following the enormous use of fertilizers in agriculture and the great mass of liquid manure spread on the fields coming from large-scale intensive livestock production. The potassium in Alsace is one example of how the manure industry pollutes the waterways.
In October 1988, a EEC directive made it compulsory for all member states to set the strength of pesticides at 1 microgram and to limit the total discharge of impurities in drinking water to 5 micrograms. This provoked a general outcry from agro-industry, chemical factories and water companies. Some want to have the new regulations suppressed. Others fear that hundreds of water companies will have to close their installations because they will not be able to abide by this instruction.
The other major pollution problem in Europe is the destruction of the earth. The great dangers such as the progressive destruction of the Alps are well known. However, the rampant destruction of the soil has gone unnoticed. In West Germany alone, 11% of the surface area is taken up by construction and 160 hectares are added every day. Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany are the world champions in density of road network. The loading of the earth with harmful materials (especially heavy metals) is growing continuously. In West Germany, 7% of the surface area is already termed "problem areas" where agricultural exploitation is no longer officially authorized — which means that it ought not to be authorized
This summary of Europe's ecological problems is bad enough. One could go on to mention public health, the increase in occupational diseases, aller-
gies and cancer, urbanization and suburban sprawl which destroy the countryside, animal conservation, the destruction caused by tourism and even the problem of food supplies for the growing section of the population living in
As everywhere, the essential cause of the destruction of the environment lies in the contradiction between the partial rationality of the interests of profits of the enterprises and the major agricultural exploitations taken individually on the one hand, and of the irrationality of the global capitalist structure. For the
EEC member states, there is also the opposition between the different governments as defenders of the interests of their own "economies". This is why all measures taken by the EEC up to today — and without a doubt in the future
— are only a series of directives, decrees or declarations of intent which lag behind the destruction of the environment caused by industry, agriculture and
The EEC elaborated three programmes of action for the protection of the environment in 1972, 1977 and 1982. They contain the description of objectives which should be pursued in the policy of member states. What is even more interesting here is the express demand in all three programmes of action to impose an examination of ecological compatibility for each new major project. We are still waiting for this demand (which comes from many ecological associations) to be translated into law. A first project was elaborated in
West Germany but it does not broach crucial areas such as the nuclear
EEC policy is only expressed by directives. They almost always fall into line with the lowest norms of the member states. The member states translate these directives into watered-down national laws that are further weakened by
There are directives in all the domains of environmental protection. Those concerning air pollution by exhaust fumes are the best known. These directives showed the French and Italian car industries to be much more powerful than the largest interests for environmental protection. Thus Europe will remain out of step on regulations for exhaust fumes already applied in Japan and the USA until well into the 1990s. Concerning factory fumes, the EEC relies on the formula "following the most modern technological developments" for the manner in which factories ought to be equipped. What this means is left to the interpretation of the governments or even the factories poverty.
tourism.
projects.
manifold exceptions
134 International Marxist Review
European Community policy
European capitalism unites against the environment 135 themselves. Thus the British power stations are unaware of all of the processes of desulphurization of fumes, the technique of fluidized bed-combustion, etc. but only equip themselves with "higher chimneys"
Concerning protection against chemical products, there are directives on the maximum content in food products, inscriptions on the packaging, and the ban on the use of certain pesticides in Europe. But the maximum values admitted are very high, and pesticides for export especially are not covered by these limitations. Considering that a large part of the production of agrochemicals from European companies are destined for dependent countries, this latitude in flouting constraints is not surprising.
For the protection of the waters there are directives on the discharge of sewage, on the quality of fresh water (the 1980 regulation already cited, which none of the officials want to accept any more) and for the protection of subsurface water. Added to this are agreements for the protection of certain rivers (the Rhine, the Mosel) and for the cleansing of the North Sea. The directives are continually modified and generally made stricter. The maximum allowable discharge of harmful products into waters, among others mercury and cyanides, has been lowered. But there is no obligation to eliminate completely materials found on the "blacklist" (longlife products, toxic materials) and new harmful materials are showing up in water.
In the flood of EEC directives there are only a few concerning the destruction of land. The one which has the greatest bearing is the compulsory study of ecological compatibility for major projects, for which all the weight is put on the developments of space and of the countryside. Opposing this are the overweening demands of the major agricultural enterprises. The consequences of the agricultural subsidies which absorb the largest part of the EEC budget are catastrophic. The small mixed farms are being destroyed (in West Germany aloné, 50 small and medium-sized farmers have to abandon cultivation every day) in favour of gigantic monoculture and livestock. The earth is oversaturated with manure or liquid fertilizer and the agro-chemical fertilizers are poisoning the earth. The forests (for example, Greece's virgin forest in Rhodopus) are being cut down in favour of new arable land for agriculture. In Italy and Spain the destruction of the subsidized olive groves for the sake of sunflower cultivation is having disastrous effects on the soil.
Moreover, since 1972 the EEC has had an "earth charter" with declarations of intent. But the real situation is getting worse. For the problem of waste elimination there are well known directives which do not say much. The directive launched in 1984 on the transport of toxic waste has only been translated into national law by West Germany and Belgium, and even there, only in a
136 International Marxist Review watered-down fashion. The EEC is even less capable than the national states of promoting a policy for avoiding waste. In France, for example, there is still production of PCB which has long since been stopped in other member countries because it gives off waste containing dioxins. The EEC does nothing for cleansing the 4,000 old refuse depots (figure calculated for all the countries of the OECD) despite the fact that these depots are a time-bomb.
The EEC turns a deaf ear to many demands of ecological movements, such as a single legal procedure for opposition to projects harmful to the environment, participation of associations of ecologists in the examination of ecological compatibility, etc. But all this is not as important as the general inability to stop the destruction of the environment perpetrated in the quest for capitalist profits. We cannot expect the EEC to attack capitalist property, to enforce bans on production and to follow a planned policy of purification of the environment. Not now, and not in 1992.
CATHERINE VERLA