Luxembourg - A group of Italian oil companies will have to pay up for the clean up of coastal waters in southern Sicily even though authorities did not prove that the
pollution was caused by their refineries, the
European Union Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday. The ruling centres on the Priolo-Augusta-Melilli area, where oil companies had appealed against clean-up bills imposed on them for pollution dating back decades.
EU judges were asked by an Italian
court whether the "polluter pays" principle, enshrined in EU environmental legislation, could be applied in this case.
Representatives of ERG, ENI and ENI-associate Syndial had appealed to Italian magistrates arguing that, since there had been no formal investigation on the cause of the pollution, a causal link between their activities and contamination of the Augusta shoreline had not been established.
But the EU court said Italian authorities could presume the firms to be liable "on account of the fact that the operators' installations are located close to the polluted area" and on the condition that they could show "a correlation between the pollutants identified and the substances used" in the refineries.
In a separate ruling concerning ENI, EU judges ruled that Italian authorities could also change the terms of the clean-up measures that oil company had to carry out, even after it had started implementing them.
They also said that the firm could be forced to pay for environmental projects even if the land it was operating on was not contaminated or it was already cleaned up, as long as the measures were necessary to prevent further environmental damage to the area.
Legambiente, Italy's biggest environmental lobby group, welcomed the ruling, calling it in a statement "very useful for the unblocking the clean-up process of the 57 most polluted areas in Italy," including former petrochemical sites in the Venice lagoon and in Naples.
Stefano Ciafani, Legambiente's scientific advisor, told the German Press Agency, dpa, that the opinion of the EU court "would limit the judicial space of manoeuvre for big oil companies to delay clean-up operations."
ERG told dpa it had no comment to make, while a spokeswoman for ENI did not immediately return calls.
The Priolo-Augusta-Melilli site became the largest petrochemical hub in
Europe in the 1960s. Since the 1970s it entered into decline, but is still active today.
Since the 1980s, evidence emerged of increased health problems among the local population - including a rising incidence of cancer and malformed babies - which campaigners blamed on the pollution caused by oil companies.
