Opinion on a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning urban wastewater treatment (recast)

12.9.2023

Mr Pascal Canfin

Chair

Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning urban wastewater treatment (recast) (COM(2022)0541 – C90363/2022 – 2022/0345(COD))

Dear Mr Chair,

The Committee on Legal Affairs has examined the proposal referred to above pursuant to Rule 110 of Parliament's Rules of Procedure, on recasting.

Paragraph 3 of that Rule reads as follows:

“If the committee responsible for legal affairs considers that the proposal does not entail any substantive changes other than those identified as such in the proposal, it shall inform the committee responsible for the subject matter thereof.

In such a case, over and above the conditions laid down in Rules 180 and 181, amendments shall be admissible within the committee responsible for the subject-matter only if they concern those parts of the proposal which contain changes.

However, amendments to parts of the proposal which remain unchanged may, by way of exception and on a case-by-case basis, be accepted by the Chair of the committee responsible for the subject matter if he or she considers that this is necessary for pressing reasons relating to the internal logic of the text or because the amendments are inextricably linked to other admissible amendments. Such reasons must be stated in a written justification to the amendments.”

Following the here attached opinion of the Consultative Working Party of the Legal Services of Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which has examined the recast proposal, and in keeping with the recommendations of the Rapporteur, the Committee on Legal Affairs considers that the proposal in question does not include any substantive changes other than those identified as such and that, as regards the codification of the unchanged provisions of the earlier act with those substantive amendments, the proposal contains a straightforward codification of the existing text, without any change in its substance.

In conclusion, at its meeting of 7 September 2023, the Committee on Legal Affairs unanimously decided to recommend that the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, as the committee responsible, proceed to examine the above proposal in accordance with Rule 110.

Yours sincerely,

Adrián Vázquez Lázara

Annex

Brussels, 18 July 2023

OPINION

FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

THE COUNCIL

THE COMMISSION

Proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council Urban wastewater treatment (recast)

COM(2022) 541 final of 26.10.2022 - 2022/0345 (COD)

Having regard to the Inter-institutional Agreement of 28 November 2001 on a more structured use of the recasting technique for legal acts, and in particular to point 9 thereof, the Consultative Working Party consisting of the respective legal services of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission met on 6 June 2023 for the purpose of examining the aforementioned proposal submitted by the Commission.

At those meetings an examination of the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council recasting Council Directive 91/271/EEC of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment resulted in the Consultative Working Party’s establishing, by common accord, that the following should have been marked with the grey-shaded type generally used for identifying substantive amendments:

- the deletion of recital 2 of Directive 91/271/EEC;

- in Article 2, point 1, the deletion of the words ‘with industrial waste water’;

- in Article 2, point 3(a), the deletion of the words ‘other than domestic waste water and run-off rain water’;

- in Annex 1, point B(3), the replacement of the words ‘to those sensitive areas which are subject to eutrophication as identified in Annex II.A (a)’ with the words ‘referred to in paragraph 1 and 3 of Article 7 and in Article 8 in accordance with those Articles’.

In consequence, examination of the proposal has enabled the Consultative Working Party to conclude, without dissent, that the proposal does not comprise any substantive amendments other than those identified as such. The Working Party also concluded, as regards the codification of the unchanged provisions of the earlier act with those substantive amendments, that the proposal contains a straightforward codification of the existing legal text, without any change in its substance.

F. DREXLER E. FINNEGAN D. CALLEJA CRESPO

Jurisconsult Jurisconsult Director-General