The Baia Mare Task Force now established

The membership of the Baia Mare Task Force – an EU initiative to follow up the cyanide spill from a gold mine in Baia Mare in Romania – has now been finalised.

The task force will be led by Mr Tom Garvey, former senior official of the European Commission. The six members of the task force are high level officials from the EU Commission and international, regional and national bodies for protection of the environment.

The mission of the task force is to establish what happened, assess the damage and propose actions to remedy the negative impacts. The task force will also propose actions to keep the general public fully informed about the situation. To prevent any similar accident to happen in the future the task force will identify potential hotspots in the Danube river basin and make suggestions to reduce risks. The task force will work until the end of this year, when its final report will be issued.

The Baia Mare Task Force is scheduled to hold its first meeting in Brussels on 13^th March.

The members of the task force are:

• Mr Jean-François Verstrynge, Deputy Director General for Environment, European Commission,
• Mr Emil Marinov, President of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, Vice Minister for Environment of Bulgaria,
• Mr Robert Rakics, Head of Department at the Ministry for Environment, Hungary,
• Ms. Liliana Mara, General Director, Ministry of Water, Forest and Environmental Protection, Romania,
• Mr Kaj Bärlund, Director of Environment and Human Settlements Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and
• Mr Philip Weller, Danube-Carpatian Programme Director, World Wide Fund for Nature.

The secretariat of the task force is being set up in Vienna, in the premises of the Commission for the Protection of the Danube River. Pending the establishment of the secretariat, the European Commission has set up a temporary information hotline.

E-mail: env-danubetf@cec.eu.int / Phone: (32-2) 299 66 60

A web page will be opened on the Europa server for news updates and links to relevant documents. Address: http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/enlarg/home.htm