Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-093"
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"en.20011001.6.1-093"2
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"Mr President, a rhetorical question often rhetorically asked is: which came first, the chicken or the egg? In the case of new clean air technology, it is usually the case that government must first lay the legislative egg from which is hatched the technology to give us cleaner cars or lorries.
In the case of this report, however, the situation is reversed, because in the main the technology is available to clean up the small engines which, as Mr Lange says, can produce more pollution in one hour than a car travelling 150 km. In many cases cost is the only reason for which we do not have cleaner engines already. In fact, Honda can produce overhead valve four-stroke engines that easily meet these requirements.
However, there are some important exceptions to this general rule. I am pleased that Mr Lange has withdrawn his suggestion that the small-producer exemption should be set at 10 000 units per year – which would not have covered any European manufacturers – and supported the Commission's position of 25 000, which covers 7 manufacturers.
However, we have some particular problems with this piece of legislation, and in particular with chainsaws and the like. These are machines which have to be light because they are carried by people; they cannot be hot, to avoid burning the user; and they have to be multi-positional – in other words they have to work when upside down. For those particular uses, two-stroke technology is the only viable option. We remember seeing those Trabants and Wartburgs coming across East Berlin; these types of two-stroke engines are dirtier but, in the case of chainsaws, there is no alternative.
The solution put forward by the Commission is to use a system of averaging and banking, whereby dirty engines can be set off against clean engines and clean technology can be saved up for the next year and used to produce some dirty engines the following year. I do not like this system. In many ways it is dishonest, because people will be buying engines which they think meet the regulations, when in fact they are dirtier. Only the big manufacturers who produce a wide range of engines can benefit from this. This system should not be supported.
However, we need protection for these particular applications and that is why I have tabled my amendment – No 29 – giving a detailed list of exemptions: strimmers, chainsaws, brush cutters, machines for drilling holes in the ice and so on. I am very disappointed that Mr Lange has not seen fit to support that amendment, because without the protection of this detailed list of exceptions, Mr Lange's amendment – No 30 – does not go far enough, relying only on some technical committee, some Commission assessment of the alternatives. Mr Lange should think very carefully about my amendment, and then we would have a deal that both sides of this House could accept."@en1
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