Assessment and management of environmental noise

The committee adopted the report by Alexander DE ROO (Greens/EFA, NL) amending the Council's common position under the codecision procedure (2nd reading). The committee retabled the amendments adopted by Parliament at first reading, aimed at beefing up the draft directive on noise into a Noise Framework Directive, to be followed by proposals for daughter directives setting specific, binding limits on noise from road vehicles, trains, rail tracks and aircraft. It also sought to stop the Council from giving the Member States too much flexibility over the noise measurement standards they would use and therefore partially reinstated the original Commission proposal, making it obligatory to use the noise indicators "Lden" and "Lnight" for acoustical planning and noise zoning. The committee also reinstated the Commission's original timetables providing for specific dates by which the different provisions of the directive had to be implemented, saying that the Council's attempts to delay them by up to two years were unacceptable. Lastly, it reinstated the Commission's original deadline for transposing the directive into national law (30 June 2003). �