Directive on concession… no words about the blue gold

A directive on concession was recently voted in the EP. Due to the substantive presure by civil society, with the help of media, the concessions are no more linked to the water (especially drinking water). To me, this is a success, although it is of course, possible to award concession for the supply of drinking water. However, concessions on important natural resources and resources needed for daily needs or every citizen shall remain in public sphere. There is movie http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/flow-for-love-of-water/ available that show us possible wrong developments when private sphere is involved in supply of public goods and resources. Of course, even bad cases can be regulated in a way not to cause all negative consequences to the nature and people. However, there is a basic difference between public and private sphere that cannot be avoided: private sphere is motivated by profit, and water shall not be a resource for profit. If this is so, than neither the service for its supply. The case is opposite in case of wastewater. But in case of drinking water concession shall be allowed only as a really urgent cases and detailed regulated (in the concession acts and concession contracts), with the limitations that can serve nature preservation and, consequently also humans. This is a common task of lawyers and natural scientist. The law plays the role of a tool to achieve these necessary goals. This is way it shall not (as it was suggested in the draft directive on concessions) open widely the door for concession. Vice versa – if the door needs to be open, restrictions, defined in advance, shall also be part of such solution.

Categorised in: Blog

This post was written by Rajko Knez