Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-11-Speech-1-049"
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"en.20001211.3.1-049"2
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"Mr President, when it comes to harmonisation measures, we have a choice between promoting the interests of the tobacco industry or standing up for public health. We would have no hesitation in choosing the latter. In other words, we would make it our business to reduce the maximum yields of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide, then we would go for decisive and striking warnings, and ban misleading wording. We would also opt for efficient measures to deal with certain technical issues.
Despite this clear course of action, we must also be conscious of the fact that we are the Parliament of a Union that sets great store by the principles of the constitutional State, which means that we must recognise the limitations of our authority, i.e. we must know what the limits are to the authority we derive from Article 95, the legal basis we are invoking for the new tobacco directive.
Assuming I have read the judgment that annuls the advertising directive correctly, we must verify whether there is a European market for tobacco products. Then we must verify whether there are obstacles to the internal market, or whether they could arise, realistically speaking. Thirdly, we must check whether the stipulations we approve will really help to improve the functioning of the internal market and whether they are commensurate with the goal to be achieved. Fourthly, we must see whether the choices we face in terms of content will contribute to a high standard of public health protection, because that is another of our duties pursuant to Article 95.
Overall, I do not see any problem with this directive. So I am extremely content with the answer I received in advance from the Commissioner, to a question which has also been raised in our group, as to how we should deal with the proposal to immediately incorporate an export ban on products we do not want to use ourselves, into this directive. If this can be settled in a legally conclusive manner by adding a reference to the legal basis of Article 133 of the Treaty then I feel we should all support this solution, and I would also hope that by so doing, we will not encounter annulment rights at a later stage.
In any case, the fact is that if it should transpire now, or further down the line, that we are not going to be able to secure the export ban, then we must do everything in our power to see that this is done subsequently. Because for ethical reasons, nobody in Europe can accept that products we do not consider good enough for ourselves, and that we do not want to allow Europeans to use
without further ado, be exported to Africa, for example. There must be no question of something like that happening. So the ban must be imposed at some point. Let us hope we can do it now.
Mr President, to finish I just have this to say. Mrs Martens was the spokesperson for the PPE-DE Group. There are serious reasons as to why she will arrive a little later here today. She is hoping she will still be in time to round off the list of speakers from the PPE-DE Group. If not, I have also spoken on her behalf."@en1
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