Valencia featured in more than half the claims in the EU document on urbanisation abuses

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Valencia featured in more than half the claims in the EU document on urbanisation abuses.

It is the third time in five years that the Eurocámara attacks the Valencia city-planning model.

2007 visit

During a visit in 2007 the Members of the European Parliament found their information on the city-planning abuses in the Valencia Comminidad.

The document analyses Spanish wild urbanism, although more than half of the claims in the document are about city-planning activities in the Valencian Comunitat.

It is the third time in five years that the Eurocámara made attacks against the Valencia city-planning model, although it has now gone a step further when producing this latest report.

The latest report referred to the first report of 2004 already described with the details of what was happening and the repercussions. The author of the latest  report, the Danish Green Member of the European Parliament, Margrete Auken, advises that during the investigation some politicians and promoters, seated elbow to elbow in the same room in the meetings reinforced  their umbilical support, even blaming the situation on the EU Commission author, affirming that she was responsible for the loss of investments in the Comunitat Valenciana.

Margrete maintains in the document that in the course of the third mission in Valencia, that took place in 2007, that the arrogance (of the Council) reached its boiling point when it was said to the members of the delegation that the received requests were a product of the collective imagination of commission.

The document is based on an avalanche of denunciations from those affected by the city-planning projects in the last developed years in Valencia, Alicante and Castelló. The report details 85 claims of proprietors and ecological and local platforms of the Comunitat.

The document recommends to the authorities that declare a moratorium on the plans that do not respect the EU criteria of the environmental and social sustainability. In addition, it recalls that the Valencia City-planning Law was reported in Luxembourg before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Lack of water

The Auken report shows that the European Commission has opened an investigation exceeding more than 250 city-planning projects that have obtained a negative opinion on the part of the competent authorities in the matter of water and of fluvial river basins. Part of the 250 questioned projects is in the Valencian Comunitat and the rest in Andalusia, Castille-La Mancha and Murcia.

One of the fundamental supports of the document approved by the Eurocámara is the position assumed by the previous one Syndicates of Greuges, Emilia Horseman.

The conclusions of Síndica de Greuges

They reflect that the rights of the proprietors have been seen to be affected, either for being undervalued by the urbanising agent, or to have unilaterally imposed urbanisation.

The report praises the action of the department of the Sindicatura de Greuges, as well as to the most diligent public prosecutors, who recently have rmade considerable efforts to restore the application of the correct procedures to these subjects on the part of some of the affected institutions.

The Auken opinion insists that thousands of European citizens have been victims of a massive urbanisation system that on many occasions has ignored people's legitimate rights, such as proprietors, while it has destroyed the Mediterranean coastal environment and the fragile ecosystems in many zones.

Criticism from the Council

The Valencia authorities have been limited to defend their activities in the critical document whereas the victims, referring to the proprietors of houses, are counted by miles and that the Europe Commission has opened a case of infraction against Spain, directly related to the urbanisation in the Comunitat Valenciana.

Final say from the EU

The document concludes by remembering the Spanish city-planning failure that has led to a disaster with the present financial crisis and a warning of corruption generated in recent years.

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