The petitions committee of the European Parliament has decided to follow up on the complaints filed by five Spanish citizens against oil exploration in the waters of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura for an alleged violation of Community legislation on habitats, birds, waters and environmental impact assessment. These people highlighted the risk that possible oil spills "threaten the water supply of the islands" and reproached the Spanish authorities for the "limited citizen participation in the process".
The European Commission considers it "premature" to state a violation of European legislation, since there is still no evidence that the exploration project "has been authorized by the authorities in Spain". However, it shows its commitment to remain "vigilant", with the aim of ensuring "compliance with the rules".
One of the petitions received by the European Parliament was made by Pedro Hernández Camacho, who warned that exploration activities entail "catastrophic risks". In addition, he criticized that the procedures for authorization are being carried out "without adequate citizen participation". "Why put our way of life at risk for an activity that has an expiration date and entails risks?", he asked.
María del Carmen Cabrera, another of the people who filed a complaint, wanted to highlight that the only source of drinking water in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura is the sea. "Faced with a minimum spill, the treatment plants would be paralyzed. The binomial drinking water and oil is, from my point of view, impossible," she said.
López Aguilar supports citizen complaints
Socialist MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar also expressed the PSOE's "outright support" for these citizen complaints. In this sense, he denounced "the risk that a future authorization will violate Community legislation", for which he asked to "keep the petition open". The also socialist Vicente Garcés was critical of the Community Executive's position and stated that it is "necessary" for the Commission to "not limit itself to acting on accomplished facts". "The EC must be more belligerent," he defended.
For his part, MEP Gabriel Mato of the European People's Party (EPP) assured that he cannot support "the claims" of these five citizens. "I'll stick with what the Commission has said: there is no violation. That is the reality," he said. In this way, he assured that all the arguments presented by the opponents of the project are "in case of accident", so he opted to "minimize that probability".
MEP Raül Romeva of the Greens/EFA group denounced that an impact on the environment is not only possible, but also "irreversible", for which he defended applying the "precautionary principle". For his part, Iñaki Irazabalbeitia, from the same parliamentary group, stressed that the main problem concerns fundamental rights, since "access to drinking water is being endangered".
Finally, MEP Willy Meyer of GUE/NGL reproached the Spanish authorities and the Commission for not opposing the project, given that "it would not even be possible in the United States, where they have learned from the mistakes of the past", thus referring to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
