Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-01-Speech-1-058"
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"en.20030901.5.1-058"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, summer follows summer, bringing disaster after disaster. Last year, it was floods which plunged Europe into mourning. This year, it has been a heatwave, bringing a health crisis in France and an environmental disaster in Portugal and on our Mediterranean coasts. These worrying freak weather conditions may be the result of global warming, which, it is a well-known fact, is itself exacerbated by the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions.
In any case, everyone is now aware that we need to be more careful in our dealings with nature. We must also be more compassionate in our dealings with each other. In Paris, it is said – and the figure is frightening – that over 800 people died whom nobody grieved for and whose bodies nobody came to claim.
The draft resolution tabled by our group, the Verts/ALE Group, contains a number of extremely positive recommendations, and I want to mention just a few of them here. As regards health, in particular, the Commission must help the Member States to guarantee to all people the rights proclaimed by Article 35 of the Charter, namely the right to have access to preventive health
care
even under exceptional climatic conditions. Where Portugal is concerned, we ask, Commissioner, that the Solidarity Fund be applied above the emergency level to genuinely help the country to bandage all its wounds. In order to reduce the greenhouse effect, we must encourage the Commission to ensure respect for the Kyoto commitments. Transport policy has a substantial part to play in this field. We must promote the most energy-efficient means of transport more.
As our fellow Member, Mr Dhaene, explained earlier, some of us came from Brussels to Strasbourg by bicycle, arriving towards the end of the morning. The aim was, of course, to promote the use of bicycles. Cycling must be provided for in the trans-European transport networks. That would make it possible to help the authorities concerned to create or improve cycle paths which link the Member States of mainland Europe.
As part of the trip, during the final section of the route, we rode along the canal between the Marne and the Rhine. The scenery is magnificent, but we noticed that the canal is underused for goods transport. We must encourage this kind of transport more, for it causes less pollution than road transport.
Lastly, I would like to mention one last proposal made in our draft resolution. It is to create a European civil protection body: the ‘casques verts’.
Their intervention in environmental disasters would encourage the Member States to shoulder their responsibilities.
In short, we must stop beating about the bush where sustainable development is concerned and take practical action. That is what our draft resolution is trying to say."@en1
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