I urge you as my local councillor to support the moves to exclude Veolia Environnement or any of its subsidiaries from all future contracts that the council awards or ad-hoc arrangements that the council enters into. This is now a current issue as Veolia have been shortlisted for Environmental Services contracts in the city.
Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem is against international law. United Nations resolutions and judgements by the International Court of Justice are absolutely clear that all Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine are illegal, as are all other efforts by Israel to change the physical and demographic status of this territory. Veolia is assisting Israel in these serious violations of international law. eg:
partnership in the development of the illegal Jerusalem Light Rail system;
operating 'settler-only' bus routes;
operating a landfill site at Tovlan where waste from both Israel and illegal settlements is dumped on Palestinian land.
Although legislation exists – Section 17 of the Local Government Act 1988 - which states that public authorities should not consider non-commercial matters when awarding contracts, there is a further directive which must also be applied to this situation. Reg 23/4 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006 No.1 made under EU Directive 2004/18/EC16) provides that …“A contracting authority may treat an economic operator as ineligible or decide not to select an economic operator in accordance with these Regulations on one or more of the following grounds, namely that the economic operator: ….(e) has committed an act of grave misconduct in the course of that economic operator's business or profession.
Given that there is explicit legal scope to exclude Veolia, for Edinburgh Council to continue to consider Veolia would be an endorsement of (or at very least, an indifference to) the criminal activities to which Veolia is a partner.
I fully expect that you will instead support justice and human rights in this matter -as have Dublin and Swansea councils in recent months- and ensure that Veolia plays no part in the operation of public services in Edinburgh.
