Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-190"
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"en.20020116.13.3-190"2
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"Mr President, we held our first debate on the Commission’s Sixth Community Environment Action Programme in May last year. At the time, the Commission proposal came under heavy attack from us as the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party. In our view, the programme was far too broad and showed a serious lack of priorities. At the same time, we wondered whether a ten-year plan was really, in fact, outdated.
We are now eight months further on, and have had input from the Commission, the Council and Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. Any satisfaction or progress? No, unfortunately, neither. The proposal, as it was presented at the time, has since been cut down to the bone. The position of the Council of Ministers is deeply disappointing on all fronts. Last time, I used the image of a Christmas tree, trimmed with a multitude of proposals, which devalued the entire text.
The current plan has more in common with an empty box than a Christmas tree. The form is just about presentable, but is very much lacking in content. I can tell you straight away who is not to blame for this. Our rapporteur, Mrs Myller, has done sterling work, and the Commissioner has made every effort to tighten up the plan and take the wishes of this House more into consideration. However, it is the Council that has frustrated every substantial improvement to the proposal. It is staggering to realise that when we, as Parliament, vote on the plan’s current version, we shall in fact be back to square one, and this after two years of hard graft on the part of the Commission and Parliament. Can this be justified to the European citizen? They set great store by the environment. It is now the Council that has destroyed all the good work that has been done.
So what should have been done instead? According to my group, the priorities that are completely lacking in the plan are climate change, energy, waste and bio-diversity. In addition, the plan should have been much more concise and should have been characterised by far more cohesion and vision. In our view, the Council is best summed up as an emperor without clothes. He may seem unremarkable at first glance, but fails the test upon further inspection.
This is not a strategy, it is even less than existing policy in a pleasant format. It therefore constitutes a step back, and we propose to reject the present proposal in its entirety."@en1
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