The Aragonese environmentalists, as across the country, do not leave surprised at the acquittal of the Prestige case. You would think that the law not allowed to do anything else, but José Manuel Marraco, Greenpeace lawyer with extensive experience in environmental law, denies him his "surprise and dismay" at the decision. "You never would think this," he says. "For the professional and the law is difficult to understand, for the citizen is incomprehensible," he adds. "You can not be waiting eleven years for this."
Marraco spares no qualifiers for the importance of this statement. "With it we have gone back decades, is removed at a stroke environmental law in Spain," he proclaims. Further, for comparison. "In France, for a similar event, such as the sinking of the Erika (1999), was condemned (to oil Total) in United States also condemned BP. Exemption Here they are," he laments.
The sentence, lawyer for Greenpeace, "gives green light to petrol boats, floating junk sailing under flags of convenience and companies under screen to come. Know now that Spain is a highway for them," he reiterates.
EFFECTIVE
The environmental organization, remember Marraco, has long called these cases the courts with small, or at least equip them with staff and means for rapid and effective instruction. Already applied to discharges in Doñana, which also went unpunished, with the same result. "It can not be that tarden eleven, easily fifteen, with appeals to the Supreme, to take a final decision on a case like this.'s A bad precedent, we are not isolated from the world," he adds.
The problem would not be in the law, but in its application. "You have to stop the legislative diarrhea, what to do is provide the means to justice. For example, the Aarhus Convention is in force in Spain since 2006. But who knows?" Asks.
As Marraco secures itself, it does not take an expert in environmental law to share the outrage over the decision. Francisco Iturbe, Ecologists in Action, felt the same "stunned disbelief" when he met the ruling. "It is incomprehensible that the courts would endorse no negligence, saying it was nobody's fault is an insult to mobilize us. Throw a message that nothing happens in Spain, they can do it again," laments Iturbe.
"What should have been a warning to mariners, never better, becomes the opposite, an invitation to criminals, and politicians, to crime, because it goes profitable, they get off scot".
