Before I fully read this legislation, I was excited by the prospect of having air quality concerns addressed in a way that clean drinking water concerns have recently been addressed. I definitely believe that we need to ensure that all Europeans have clean air to breathe regardless of where they live. However, I'm a bit disappointing by this proposal.
Before I dive too deeply into things, I'll simply outline my concerns upfront: this Act simply tries to do way too much in scope and the actual policies it proposes are not very effective in enforcing what it aims to achieve, in my opinion. This Act consists of a mostly-ok list of rights, but it fails to produce any policies which actually enforce and entrench those rights. Instead, it has more recommendations and words of encouragement than anything else.
Most of the rights under Section III are fine, but some are massive reaches or simply too unclear. For instance, "the right to utilize and enjoy all natural resources according to the principles of sustainable development" is a bit vague and could easily be used out of context. I'm assuming that the sustainable development part is supposed the key component here, but all the words preceding sustainable development suggest that citizens are entitled to literally all resources. The text could be interpreted to mean that all natural resources are up for grabs to be used by citizens. This could be concerning, for instance, because I definitely don't want private Inquistan citizens to have their hands on uranium. Other rights which have been outlined, such as "the right to participate in the decision-making process concerning development policies, plans and programs projects or activities that may have adverse impact on the environment and public health" don't really mean much, because it could be argued that current state legislatures already allow for such participation through democratic voting, even though I'm assuming what this Act is really trying to achieve is to include the public directly in the formulation of environmental and health policies.
With that all being said, I don't want to spend too much time picking apart each of the rights that have been outlined. Instead, my main suggestion to the author of this Act is to instead focus on a few key rights, instead of this many, and to produce actionable policies which support those rights. To give an example, in the Safe and Accessible Water Act, there was only one right which was outlined: which is the right to safe drinking water. That's it. That right is guaranteed by 1) ensuring that all settlements within that member state have guaranteed access to safe drinking water and 2) ensuring that all settlements within that member state have effective wastewater and sewage treatment systems. How are those policies carried out? By mandating that all states create clean drinking water and sewage quality standards and by mandating that all states have national agencies to monitor, regulate and enforce those standards. This proposed Act here, has way too many different rights that it hopes to guarantee and not nearly enough actionable policies to ensure those rights.
I believe this Act needs to be completely refocused. I'm not even sure if amendments could save this bill in my view.
My final thoughts are concerning the structure of this bill as a whole. I've noticed a certain formatting trend that has been adopted by the councillors of Reitzmag. I would recommend that the Councillor of Reitzmag take a look and familiarize himself with the passed legislation in our Acquis Communautaire in terms of their formatting. Under each section of a bill, the specific points should be organized into clauses and sub clauses. In front of the ECoJ it is much easier to refer to specific clauses or sub clauses under sections of legislation rather than referring to "whereas number 4 and whereas number 7 under x section". The term whereas is also not a very definitive term, and it's also just quite superfluous. There is no point to saying "Whereas, we support human rights" when we can simply and more definitively say that "we support human rights". I'm not trying to be nit-picky, but as the Council Speaker, I want to give Councillors advice on how they can write effective legislation that could be defended before the ECoJ. I want all Council legislation to be upheld and to be upheld in a way that honours their author's true intentions. The ECoJ tends to - and rightfully so as a non-partisan body - judge legislation very, very narrowly and at face-value. Thus, the safest way to organize legislation is to do it as predecessors have done.
Edward Firoux
Council Speaker and Councillor for Inquista
The Kingdom of Spain