Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-24-Speech-1-152"
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"en.20051024.19.1-152"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are debating an important topic this evening, namely greenhouse gases, and f-gases, to be precise. Everyone is agreed that measures must be taken urgently in order to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases. First of all, though, I should like to thank Mrs Doyle who, as rapporteur, has taken a number of important initiatives in order to safeguard the environmental quality of these proposals, and has shown much commitment in this. She has opted to change the legal basis from the internal market to the environment, which I believe to be of the utmost importance and which enjoys the warm support of the majority of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament.
The common position is disappointing. A number of countries in the Council have voted against it because they have already more far-reaching measures in place. With the internal market legal basis, Austria and Denmark would have to withdraw their more far-reaching measures, which is really unacceptable. The internal market must provide a high level of environmental protection. If that is not the case, the environmental legal basis is more suitable because it allows the Member States to introduce more far-reaching measures themselves.
Europe is not there to impose changes for the worse on the Member States or to deny Member States the opportunity of adopting proper environmental policy. Europe is there to improve the conditions under which all of us live. The environmental legal basis is also clearly less complicated and as such, fits in with the better regulation project, which we all want. For the record, the environmental legal basis is not a licence to start issuing all kinds of bans arbitrarily; it goes without saying that any ban should be underpinned by a sound environmental reason.
In the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, an overwhelming majority were in favour of reducing the use of f-gases. Many companies work with f-gases and a large number of companies have sent lobbyists in order to get this House round to their way of thinking. The army of lobbyists claims that there is no alternative to using of f-gases, that their use is either not that harmful or negligible relatively speaking. Although, needless to say, I can appreciate all these arguments, I think that innovation is necessary and that we should really phase out the use of the most harmful greenhouse gases as soon as possible.
We must, of course, carefully consider the environmental impact bans have and we must ensure that the restrictions to market access are proportionate; we would be happy to do this in consultation with the Council. There is broad consensus in this House about the need for adopting an ambitious climate policy. Sadly, it appears that a broad consensus for a strong climate policy is not equal to the automotive industry. The Socialists would have liked to push car manufacturers into replacing f-gases in air-conditioning systems more quickly. Unfortunately, they were unable to do so.
By way of compromise, our group proposes putting the latest date of introduction forward by one year, from 2017 to 2016. This is not a shocking change, but sufficient for the car industry to launch a strong lobby to make it clear to MEPs that that is really unacceptable. The production cycle of a car model is six years, but I would ask the car industry out there whether that attitude is not too defensive. Innovation is of paramount importance if the car industry wants to survive the competition from China, and it is then inappropriate to put innovation on the backburner. If we continue to do this, the Lisbon agenda will not come to anything either. As for Mr Schnellhardt’s proposed exemption for small volumes, we regard that as unnecessary."@en1
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