Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-192"
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"en.20031105.15.3-192"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I congratulate the Commission on its initiative and Mrs Honeyball on her excellent report. Today the taxation of passenger cars in the Union is undoubtedly, as we say in Catalan, a real
in other words, a ‘rag bag’. As the report rightly emphasises, the functioning of the internal market is affected by the diversity, the heterogeneity and sometimes the complexity of tax systems. The Commission and the report are, therefore, quite right to address this issue, in order to ensure that competition takes place in the best conditions possible. Indeed, it appears extremely appropriate to consider taxing the use of vehicles rather than their acquisition, and the Commission is, therefore, right to propose abolishing the vehicle registration tax and establishing or increasing taxes on circulation, fuel and the use of some road infrastructures. We need to give priority to environmental criteria in order to achieve the Kyoto objectives, as the report rightly reminds us.
On the other hand, as regards diesel vehicles, I agree with Mrs Honeyball that they should benefit in terms of taxation. Studies in this field appear to conclude that emissions from diesel engines are generally lower than emissions from other types of engine. The logical consequence of the ‘polluter pays’ principle would be to levy less tax on something that pollutes less. We must never forget, however, that from the environmental point of view and also for geopolitical reasons, the final objective must be to replace current fuels with non-contaminating and non-conflicting sources of energy. To this end, we should welcome all research efforts conducted into new energies, such as hydrogen."@en1
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