Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-327"
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"en.20010313.18.2-327"2
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"Mr President, representatives of the Commission and the Council, I would like to warmly thank all the members of the committee for the constructive debate this part of the directive fuelled in committee, and I also wish to thank the division responsible for servicing the committee. We are in a rather special situation in the sense that the committee in the second reading was even able to improve on the results of the first reading, and this is due – thanks again to the committee members – to the adopted amendment, which combined the best aspects of the first reading and the Council’s common position. We have therefore drawn up some very ambitious aims for limits on emissions by the year 2010 to present to Parliament. Last summer’s common position took the results of Parliament’s first reading into account only to a very limited extent. However, the committee’s own vote on the issue shows how much it wanted to support the results of that first reading, and so we now have adopted a good and purposeful position with regard to tomorrow’s vote. I hope this position will prove successful tomorrow.
This directive is an attempt to reduce the quantity of certain pollutants in the air, which are sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and ammonia, so that in the long term we reach a situation where there is no danger to people’s health. This is to be achieved by setting some interim targets for the year 2010. These interim targets should help us to get to a point at which areas where the critical acidification loads are exceeded will be halved, where the ozone load that affects health is reduced by two thirds, and where the ozone load in excess of critical levels for vegetation is reduced by a third.
Regrettably, these decisions will not, however, enable us to achieve the targets that were agreed in the Community’s Acidification Strategy. For this reason, the parliamentary report now being dealt with is proposing a deadline until 2015, when these critical loads may no longer be exceeded, and a target for the year 2020, when critical levels should not be exceeded either. The proposal for a directive also contains the call for a review of the situation in 2004. The point of this is to better enable us to steer a course towards the 2010 deadline, see if we are on the right track, and consider what to do to achieve the targets.
The proposal for a directive under discussion places a demand on Member States to reduce the proportion of pollutants in the air to a level that is safe for people’s health, although the Member States themselves can choose the remedies they need to attain results. The biggest threats, and thus the most challenging problem for the Member States, are emissions that result from energy production, and in this respect Mrs Oomen-Ruijten’s report, which has just been debated here, was a most important one, and I genuinely hope that in tomorrow’s vote we can achieve the best possible results, as that will have a direct impact on how the emission ceilings this directive deals with can be achieved.
Other causes for concern are industry and traffic. Industry is the only area that has been able to reduce emissions in the last few decades, while traffic only appears to continue to produce increased emission levels. Member States therefore have to do something about it. Traffic is a real challenge. We must be able to reduce traffic and change our behaviour, favouring alternatives that are less polluting, rail traffic and public transport, and, at the same time, lend support to technical developments that will have an impact on cleaner transport systems in other ways.
And lastly, I would like to say that the costs of this directive have been set too high in various connections. If we take into account what was decided in the Kyoto Protocol, for example, we will get to a position where we can halve the proposed costs. If then we compare them to the benefits we will derive as a result of this directive in terms of improved health, they will be worth many times the costs incurred."@en1
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