Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-03-Speech-3-097"
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"en.20000503.6.3-097"2
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"Mr President, I only have a few minutes so I want to focus on just one particular point in the Commission communication. Let us recall that the title of this communication is ‘From single market to worldwide challenges’. Yet one of the remarkable things about this communication is that it does not appear to recognise that one of those worldwide challenges must be how the airline industry will respond to increasing environmental concerns and likely environmental legislation. Of all the many words in this communication, just one short paragraph is devoted to this issue.
As rapporteur for a very good Commission communication on aviation and environment I know that the issue of environment and competitiveness is a very live one with strong feelings on both sides of the debate. For example, that communication starts by saying that the growth of the air transport industry is, and I quote, “unsustainable and must be reversed because of its impact on climate and on the quality of life and health of European citizens” and it goes on to say very clearly that ‘business as usual’ is not an option. It is quite obvious that aviation’s response to environmental concerns will have effects on competitiveness, some positive and some negative.
Let us not underestimate either the impact of aviation on the environment. A report launched in the UK just yesterday by a number of environmental NGOs including Friends of the Earth forcefully made the case that one flight to and from the US could cause more pollution than the average UK motorist causes in a year. It makes the case that the world’s 16 000 commercial jet aircraft produce more than 600 million tonnes of CO2 every year – nearly as much as all the countries of Africa put together. It makes the case that the number of people flying will almost double in the next fifteen years.
I would ask therefore that we see a bit more environmental mainstreaming. Rather than confining the environmental aspects of aviation to a report solely devoted to that subject, we should be seeing environment threaded through all approaches to this policy area, particularly one which purports to be addressing issues of competitiveness. Mr Sterckx has included environment in this own report. I very much welcome that but I would also like to see environment automatically mainstreamed through all Commission reports and communications."@en1
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