Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-19-Speech-1-138"
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"en.20040419.11.1-138"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner de Palacio, ladies and gentlemen, cutting the amount of energy used by appliances is to everyone’s benefit. It benefits the environment, enabling us to meet our Kyoto targets faster and more cheaply, and it benefits the consumer, because he saves on his electricity and energy bills. It is also an opportunity for industry to put innovative products on the market, especially if we have uniform standards here all across Europe. The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats therefore greatly welcomes the European Commission’s proposal and we expressly thank Commissioner de Palacio, for her commitment.
Like the other groups, however, we would like a few changes to the Commission’s proposal. We want greater clarity about what the Commission will actually do with these powers in the next few years. For that reason, we would like a list of products that will be subject to implementing measures in the first few years if there are no voluntary agreements to achieve the same objective faster. We want the text to contain fewer vague legal terms, and above all we want very strict supervision of the market; that is a priority for the PPE-DE Group. We cannot have a situation, with this or other matters, where honest people eventually lose out, where a person who only applies the EC mark when he really keeps to the rules is punished because others stick the mark on without complying with anything. That is why there must be extremely severe penalties. We must have better controls and the requirements must be such that they actually can be controlled.
We must be ambitious, because only then will there be no motivation for individual Member States to go beyond the minimum standards. That is why we are being flexible in the matter in voting for the two legal bases tomorrow if the aim is ambitious, and the Council’s reaction discourages me a little here. I am very disappointed that the Irish Presidency and the Council as a whole are being so hesitant. It will encourage individual countries to go it alone. I do not think that is a good thing. We need common European standards, and I must personally say that in my ten years’ work in the European Parliament I have seldom seen the Council behave so destructively or a presidency handle a matter so badly.
I appeal to the Council and above all to the Irish presidency, which unfortunately is not represented here today, but perhaps someone can pass the message on, to be guided by Parliament’s amendments, at least when working on the common position in June. If they do not do that, if the Council simply ignores these amendments, then we will have a rag bag of national rules, we will miss the Kyoto targets and consumers will continue to waste money unnecessarily on power and energy. Then the Irish presidency will have failed on this point. Its last chance is to really follow Parliament and I strongly appeal to it to do so."@en1
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