Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-13-Speech-3-188"
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"en.20001213.7.3-188"2
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"Mr President, I should like to express my thanks to Mr García-Margallo y Marfil for his work. I only intend to speak about the taxation of aviation fuel. Parallel to this debate, we have been holding talks with Mr Currie, the Director-General for Environmental Affairs, on the outcome of the negotiations in The Hague. In this context, I am sorry to say that aircraft emissions do pose a problem; although air traffic is not responsible for a large percentage of pollutant emissions, its volume is growing very rapidly, and we must therefore avoid any temptation to trivialise it.
But we must also reach an agreement, because there are widely differing views here in the House about the method we should use to tackle this problem. I believe we all agree that it would be very difficult indeed to find a global solution but that a global solution represents the ideal outcome. There are now some – and they include a majority of the committee – who say they want a European tax, to which the rapporteur has rightly replied that such a tax could only cover a tiny percentage of the world's air traffic and, more crucially, that it would create a huge problem for European industry. This, I believe, gives us good reason to be sceptical about this solution, although views vary, even within the PPE-DE Group. I know that my own party at home would support the principle of a European tax, but I believe the time has come for us to make a real concerted effort to identify common ground and to seek the solution that has the greatest possible beneficial impact on the environment coupled with the least possible distortion of competition for European industry.
To that end, the proposal for emission-based take-off and landing fees ought to be seriously examined, because it offers a means of including aircraft from other parts of the world, such as the United States and Japan, in the taxation regime when they land in Amsterdam, London, Paris or Frankfurt and thus of achieving greater environmental benefit and less distortion of competition. There might be problems with the WTO, but I believe it is up to the Commission to seek a solution at the WTO negotiations, a solution which is compatible with the WTO rules and which our trading partners might be persuaded to accept."@en1
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