Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-04-Speech-1-074"
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"en.20060904.18.1-074"2
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".
Madam President, what I actually wanted to do was to thank the rapporteur, but she is not here yet, so we will have to do that later. The draft report she produced was a good one. Some of the points in it proved controversial when we came to vote on them. Where one of them – Article 4 – is concerned, a contradiction remains in the report that the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has adopted, for we adopted two different – and mutually exclusive – versions of it, and it is for that reason that our group wants to reiterate our desire that the future tax on motor vehicles should be levied strictly in proportion to the amount of CO2 emitted.
As Mr Wiersma said earlier, energy efficiency is of course an issue, but any attempt to use tax policy to regulate everything you possibly can will end in failure. Our position is quite clear: we want tax to be strictly proportionate to CO2 emissions, without reference to the technology used, to the use to which the vehicle is put or to how big it is; in other words, we want it to be purely environmental. If an attempt were to be made to use this instrument to instigate some sort of campaign against larger cars, then that would be mistaken, for it is the bigger models, the more expensive cars, that make technological progress in the manufacturing of cars possible, in that it is they that are first fitted with important safety features and first take environmental considerations into account, since it is in these expensive cars that a new technology can be better developed.
No more calumnies on big cars, then; instead, let us stick with the objective we all share – that of achieving 120 mg per kilometre by 2010. That is difficult enough as a project, one that demands considerable efforts of some of the Member States, particularly of the new one, where the cars on the road are older than the average for the European Union. We need a degree of flexibility if our common objective of renewing the stock of motor vehicles is not to result in discrimination within the European internal market, and that is why we too believe – as a resolution of the Committee attests – that the Commission should additionally produce a study by 31 December of this year about what importance should be attached to factors other than CO2, in order to ensure a compromise.
We, though, have no desire to bring about a reduction in CO2 by dealing with all the other pollutants that are already being emitted, and that is where the divide between the groups lies, although I do believe that we can come to an understanding about this. We have tabled an amendment – the amendment in question is number 40 – to the effect that the Member States should be given the option of giving separate treatment to old cars that have been licensed for at least twenty years. As a rule, these old cars, being based on old-style technology, put out quite a lot of pollutants, but there are so few of them on the market that we can deal with them in the same way that several Member States are doing already.
As far as registration tax is concerned, I am persuaded that it should be dropped once certain transitional periods are over; it is an obstacle to the European single market, and so we should agree to let it expire in such a way that not only are the Member States’ fiscal interests taken into account but also an orderly transition is possible.
I will conclude by saying that I wish you, Commissioner, a great deal of success. I know how difficult European fiscal policy is; harmonising it brings one up against problems wherever one turns. On many fronts, we are making next to no headway, and as long as unanimity is required, it will be difficult to make the sort of progress that really is of some use. With this in mind, we endorse the report and support you in your difficult task as Commissioner for tax."@en1
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