EU initiative on the control of major accident hazards arising from pipelines

The European Council and the Parliament recognised that pipeline accidents had occurred in Europe and worldwide, which clearly indicated the 'major ac cident hazard' potential of pipelines. The present paper presents an overvi ew of the Community Policy on the control of major accident hazards arising from pipelines, summarises the Commission review/assessment of existing le gislation on pipelines within the Member States and outlines the principles on which a possible EU initiative should be based. The review has shown th at many Member States do not have comprehensive 'major accident hazard' leg islation in place for pipelines and therefore an EU initiative would comple te existing industrial risk management legislation, based on the 'precautio nary principle'. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.