Press Release: Global efforts to phase out ozone-depleting substances back on track

The European Commission welcomed the outcome of an extraordinary meeting of the Parties to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, on 24-26 March 2004 in Montreal, the Protocol's birthplace. The 183 Parties agreed how to respect a scheduled ban on the production and consumption of methyl bromide, a highly ozone damaging pesticide still in use in some countries. Under the Montreal Protocol, the ban is to come into effect in industrialised countries on 1 January 2005. Demands for far-reaching exemptions put forward by the US and a number of other countries, including some EU Member States, had jeopardised the phase-out timetable and were the main reason that a previous conference of the Parties in Nairobi last November collapsed.

http://www.unep.org/ozone/index.asp http://www.unep.org/ozone/index.asp

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