16th EU-India summit on
April 16, 2015 “cancelled by the EU”
Promotion of hazardous waste trade by linguistic corruption will have catastrophic
environmental and occupational health consequences
The correspondence between European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
with India and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs
and Security Policy has revealed that the scheduled 16th EU-India
summit on April 16, 2015 has been cancelled by the EU. The first India-EU Summit took place in
Lisbon in June 2000. The last engagement between both sides was held in May
2013 in New Delhi. There were few statements from both Indian and EU officials expressing keen interest to revive the talks. The
12th Summit in New Delhi on February 10 2012 was the first Summit to be held in
India after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. The EU as a bloc of 28
countries is India’s largest trading partner.
India and the EU have signed a number of bilateral agreements and MoUs
including Science & Technology Agreement, Joint Vision Statement for
promoting Cooperation in the field of Information and Communications Technology
and Joint Declaration on Enhanced Cooperation in Energy.
Disregarding the opposition to the Foreign
Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance sector, government of India promulgated
an ordinance approving hike in FDI cap in the insurance sector from
26 per cent to 49 per cent December 2014. This was one of the main demands of
the EU in FTA negotiations. Social movements, political parties, trade unions and cooperatives are
opposed to the FTA.
ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA) has been
opposing it for its promotion of hazardous waste trade by defining waste as
non-new good. Although as of January 2015, 182 states including India and the
European Union are parties to the UN’s Basel Convention on the Control of
Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal such EU-India FTA
and other such FTAs are undermining the Convention. The EU fully implemented the Basel Ban amendment
–that attempted to end the exploitation of the weaker regulations and
infrastructure of poorer countries to avoid the responsibility for minimizing
waste and hazards in richer countries- in its Waste Shipment Regulation, making
it legally binding in all EU member states. India is yet to ratify Basel Ban
and incorporate it in its law although its support was implicit in the support Group
of 77 gave to the amendment.
Under the influence of international recyclers EU apparently
revised its position and in a manifest inconsistency it supports ban on export
of old toxic computers (e-waste) from the EU
to a
developing countries like India but it approves of old end-of-life ships full of asbestos
and Persistent Organic Pollutants
for such export. EU-India FTA facilitated such inconsistencies. Unless India
bans hazardous waste, India will be faced with catastrophic environmental and
occupational health consequences because "like water running downhill,
hazardous wastes invariably will be disposed of along the path of least
resistance and least expense” in a situation where Indi does not have the
health infrastructure to deal with environmental and occupational diseases.
Notably,
a study by Cornell University estimated that 62 million deaths per year (40 % of
all deaths) can be attributed to environmental factors, particularly organic
and chemical pollutants that accumulate in the air and the water.
For Details: Gopal Krishna, ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA), Mb: 08227816731,
09818089660, E-mail:1715krishna@gmail.com, Web: www.toxicswatch.org
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