Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-01-Speech-1-053"
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"en.20030901.5.1-053"2
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"Mr President, this summer, we have observed the disastrous effects of the heatwave: drought, fires, and water and air pollution. Above all, however, we are dismayed by the deaths of elderly people, and in particularly high numbers, in a country like France.
We should not normally, however, call upon the EU for help. Our European neighbours too have been hit, and a large country, properly governed, should be able to deal with this type of situation by itself. France is now in an extremely vulnerable position, however, since the budgetary margins for manoeuvre were not restored when this was possible, that is to say at the time when tax revenue was plentiful.
France is also characterised by two very negative factors: the greater difficulty of operating the health care system, particularly in summer, when there is a lack of practitioners and when the working week has been reduced to 35 hours; and the fact that families are apparently more spread out than in neighbouring countries, so that it has been less easy for loyalties of blood to come into play.
In this regard, I would point out, in passing, that the need for geographic mobility on the part of workers, often defended by the European Union, should be strongly qualified in order better to preserve, wherever possible, the social and family link. Above all, a great task for the EU in the future will be to step up its internal and external actions to combat the greenhouse effect and, therefore, global warming. Maintaining the current level of CO2 emissions would, for example, have irreversible effects upon the climate, and we are asking the EU to pursue implementation of the Kyoto Protocol carefully with a view to better integrating policies on energy and the environment. On this point, it will be necessary to give priority to renewable energy sources, certainly, but, above all, to nuclear energy, which is very thrifty in terms of CO2 emissions. If nuclear energy is to be more widely accepted, however, the issue of managing and eliminating radioactive waste definitely needs to be resolved. With this goal in mind, we wish to see joint research on a large scale put in place, something that is an absolute priority, because on this everything else depends.
Finally, a third avenue of reflection has to do with the fact that a reduction in greenhouse gases will come about partly through getting a better grip upon road transport. We think that the proposal for a directive on road infrastructure charging should accept the incorporation into the price of tolls not only of the costs of maintaining the networks but also of the cost of the damage, not at present broken down, inflicted by such transport upon the environment and, therefore, upon the community as a whole."@en1
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