WRITE A PETITION TO EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT and enforce reassesment of EURATOM Treaty!

WRITE A PETITION TO EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT and enforce reassesment of EURATOM Treaty!

TAKES  A COUPLE OF HOURS TO DO!

Pr C.Busby on the EU Parliament Petition for EURATOM Justification, 6th of August 2012

Pr C.Busby on the EU Parliament Petition for EURATOM Justification

Explanation of the Strategy behind the EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Petition

C Busby 7^th March 2012

It is clear now that the evidence shows that radioactive pollution from Chernobyl, Fukushima and nuclear power plants, reprocessing sites etc has been killing people. The evidence is overwhelming but it is ignored by the authorities. This is because they believe, or pretend to believe in the ICRP risk model. So there is an impass. Despite the huge amount of evidence in the peer review literature, the politicians, who are not scientists, believe the ICRP and UNSCEAR, who dismiss any evidence they don’t like and do not even discuss it or cite it. How do we deal with this Kafakesque situation?

The way is to use Human Rights and Environment Legislation. Malone and Pasternack suggest some ways of plugging into the system in such a way that it has to be formally dealt with. (Reference: Malone LA and Pasternack S (2006) “Defending the Environment: Civil Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law“. Washington: Island Press)

The specific hook is the EURATOM Basic Safety Standards Directive which was considered by the European Parliament in 1998. Pr Chris Busby was asked to consider this by the Irish Greens in Brussels in 1998, and that is where ECRR started,  advising the Parliament to oppose the EURATOM BSS which specifically permitted recycling radioactive waste into consumer goods. The Parliament was unable to block the BSS as EURATOM precedes the EU Treaty and the Parliament has only advisory status. But they were able to get an amendment to the original document. It was a very important (for us, and all living) amendment which was:

Article 46. Justification

1. Member States shall ensure that new classes of practices resulting in exposure to

ionising radiation are justified in advance of being first adopted or first approved.

2. Existing classes of practices shall be reviewed as to justification whenever new and important evidence about their efficacy or potential consequences is acquired.

What this means, is that the EC and the Member State Competent Authorities have to by law re-open the issue of Justification if there is new evidence that their original justification was faulty. And, of course, there is new evidence. The EURATOM BSS was drafted in the late 1980s and even by 1996 the effects of Chernobyl were not clearly in the literature. But now they are. And a whole lot more besides. Since 1996, the ECRR has published 2 risk models and has picked up many extremely eminent radiation experts (www.euradcom.org). At the same time, the ICRP has lost Jack Valentin and now has very few competent individuals. It is easy to show that ICRP and UNSCEAR are protecting nuclear industry interests.

Two ways to act – prepare one or both

1. Write a Petition to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament. This is another way of opening up the issue. The draft  of the Petition comes together with an appendix containing an explanation and the principal new scientific evidence on which the Petition is based, as well as scientific references.

It is suggested that this document be used as a template for an individual petition, from yourself or the NGO you represent, for a petition to the European Parliament. This can be submitted online (see details) but would be more powerful if it were a paper copy sent to the address of the Petitions Committee in Brussels by post recorded delivery (signed for).  Please add your own reasons why you feel that the radioactive releases from the nuclear project are or will affect you personally e.g. you live near a nuclear plant and feel that you suffer an increased risk of cancer, or that your children may be affected etc

Download EU Petition Template. !!! The Template is a version for Sweden. You have to adapt it for Your country, examples for UK and Ireland are given below :

 Europarlpetition Template SWEDEN

English UK version RTF:   Europarlpetition UK

Ireland :                Europarlpetition Ireland

French, German and Spanish versions are being prepared

Send the Europarl Petition to:

European Parliament

The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament

Rue Wiertz

B-1047 BRUSSELS

Belgium

 

2. At the same time, begin the second part of this strategy. Copy the Petition you sent to the EU Petitions Office to the National Environmental State Office. This is usually the Ministry of the Environment. Check your Government to find out. Add a covering letter asking the Minister to arrange for the National Competent Authority to set up a process where re-Justification of the country’s Radiation exposure practices which is transparent and (according to international Human Rights agreements and laws) permits inputs from scientists appointed by the public.

See the details of this process on National NJ

 

For any questions or help email  info@nuclearjustice.org   

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THE BACKGROUND AND RULES

1. One of the fundamental rights of European citizens:

Any citizen, acting individually or jointly with others, may at any time exercise his right of petition to the European Parliament under Article 227 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union       http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/00533cec74/Petitions.html

The description of the RULES of the right to  Petition the power in EU is downloadable here:

PetitionEUrules

Any citizen of the European Union, or resident in a Member State, may, individually or in association with others, submit a petition to the European Parliament on a subject which comes within the European Union’s fields of activity and which affects them directly. Any company, organisation or association with its headquarters in the European Union may also exercise this right of petition, which is guaranteed by the Treaty. A petition may take the form of a complaint or a request and may relate to issues of public or private interest. The petition may present an individual request, a complaint or observation concerning the application of EU law or an appeal to the European Parliament to adopt a position on a specific matter. Such petitions give the European Parliament the opportunity of calling attention to any infringement of a European citizen’s rights by a Member State or local authorities or other institution.

 2. The European Parliament amended the Euratom Basic Safety Standards Directive by including the Clause 2 of Art 46:

BASIC SAFETY STANDARDS (2011)

European Basic Safety Standards Directive – Brussels, 29.9.2011

COM(2011) 593 final 2011/0254

Article 2 . Scope

1. This Directive applies to any planned, existing or emergency exposure situation which involves a risk from exposure to ionising radiation which cannot be disregarded from the radiation protection point of view with regard to the health protection of workers, members of the public, or patients and other individuals subject to medical exposure or with regard to the protection of the environment.

3. This Directive applies to the management of existing exposure situations, in

particular the exposure of the public to indoor radon, the external exposure from

building materials and cases of lasting exposure resulting from the after-effects of an emergency or a past activity.

 Article 5. General principles

Member States shall establish legal requirements and an appropriate regime of regulatory control which, for all exposure situations reflect a system of radiation protection based on the principles of justification, optimisation and dose limitation:

(a) Justification: decisions introducing or altering a radiation source, an exposure pathway or actual exposures shall be justified in the sense that such decisions shall be taken with the intent to ensure that the individual or societal benefit resulting from them offsets the detriment that they may cause.

(b) Optimisation: in all exposure situations, radiation protection shall be optimised with the aim of keeping the magnitude and likelihood of exposure and the number of individuals exposed as low as reasonably achievable, taking into account economic and societal factors,

 Article 14 . Estimation of the effective and equivalent dose

For the estimation of effective and equivalent doses, the following values and relationships shall be used:

(a) For external radiation, the values and relationships laid down in Publication 103 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection shall be used to estimate the effective and equivalent doses.

(b) For internal exposure from a radionuclide or from a mixture of radionuclides, the values and relationships laid down in Publication 103 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection and the ingestion and inhalation dose coefficients laid down in Publication 72 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection

Chapter V. Justification and regulatory Control of Practices

Article 20.  Justification of practices

 1. Member States shall ensure that new types of practices resulting in exposure to ionising radiation are justified before being approved.

2. Member States shall list the approved types of practices in legislation or administrative acts.

3. Existing types of practices shall be reviewed as to their justification whenever new and important evidence about their efficacy or potential consequences is  acquired.

It follows that if new evidence has appeared about the potential consequences of the EURATOM Basic Safety Directive, Under Article 20 (in the original 1996 version Article 6) all practices involving radiation exposure have to be re-justified. It is a legal requirement.  What is proposed, therefore, is that all individuals resident in or citizens of a EU member state country, and all NGOs based in such countries, petition the European Parliament to require a re-justification of all radiation producing practices covered by the Euratom Basic Safety Standards Directive in any of its forms in the light of the new scientific evidence of health risks.

This new evidence is appended to the Petition as an Appendix and petitioners may ask for the evidence to be presented in any scientific discussion by members of the European Committee on Radiation Risk www.euradcom.org , or the International Committee on Nuclear Justice www.nuclearjustice.org .

www.nuclearjustice.org is the site dedicated to a new project to force the governments of the world to realise that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection is unsafe. This will stop further nuclear contamination of the environment and show the military use of Uranium to be illegal. The first part of this is to use existing legislation in Europe, the terms of the EURATOM Basic Safety Standards Directive. What we want you to do is to download the Petition asking for re-Justification from the website, sign it and post it to:
European Parliament
The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 BRUSSELS
Belgium

Web address for online petition:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/00533cec74/Petitions.html