Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-117"
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"en.20070213.16.2-117"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, let me just start by giving you a brief summary of what we have achieved. I would remind you that it was about two and a half years ago that the Commission kicked off a new initiative, having come to the conclusion, following the Kok report, that the Lisbon Strategy needed to be got back on its feet again. We want this strategy, which, in the first half of the decade was in essence no more than a political objective without the least chance of becoming reality, to come at least closer to its objective in the decade’s second half. I would claim that it has done that. ‘Lisbon’ does not yet, admittedly, have quite the same ring to it as ‘Kyoto’, but every Member State is now coming up with its national plans. We in this House have come up with a structure for getting to grips with the Lisbon Strategy and trying to move it forward. The Commission, too, has set new priorities for it. We have held inter-parliamentary conferences here in this House, with an ever-increasing number of participants from the parliaments. All this shows that we are going in the right direction and that the attempt at resuscitating the strategy has been successful.
Secondly, we have succeeded in making it clear that, although there may well be three pillars to the Lisbon Strategy, our ability to pursue a proper environmental and social policy is dependent on growth and job creation. We have also to make it plain that the Lisbon Strategy is also Europe’s response to globalisation.
In the resolution – the subject-matter of which will obviously be different from what it was in former years – we will make it clear that there are a number of deficiencies in the internal market that have to be alleviated. There are many of them, but I would just like to point out two. One is that the further development of European patent law has still not been forthcoming, and on this front we expect the Commission to take some initiatives, such as it has already produced on the liberalisation of goods traffic in the internal market, which is an equally crucial matter.
It is energy policy, though, on which the summit and the Commission’s – and this House’s – activities will primarily focus. Let me remind you of what happened last year, when the Heads of State or Government were not to be persuaded that energy policy really had claims on Europe’s concern and that a European approach to the subject was needed, when the view still prevailed that these things could be sorted out at the national level. That has changed. This time round, if energy policy is discussed at the summit, everyone will be working on the assumption that this is a task for Europe.
In this resolution, we have said that renewable energies must, of course, be promoted in so far as possible, but we have also highlighted the continuing importance of nuclear power, which will be made inevitable in future by the problem of CO2 emissions, a problem addressed as a whole in this resolution as well, and also, of course, discussed in much greater depth in the parallel resolution on climate change. We have set ourselves very ambitious targets in respect of energy efficiency, and I do in fact think that – as the figures have already shown – a share of 30% in the world’s economic product combined with a share of only 15% in emissions is already an indication that Europe is leading the way where energy efficiency is concerned, but we can achieve far more and be an example to the world.
Something else to which reference has been made was the remaining need for us to make the internal market in energy a reality. We know that an oligarchic and monopolistic structure continues to exist and that there is only one part of the European Union in which one can speak of a real internal market, while there are real deficits in large areas of the EU.
I would also like to address the aspect of ‘better regulation’. Here, too, much has been achieved. Thinking back to the interinstitutional agreement of December 2003, that was certainly a breakthrough, but all that glisters is not gold. The Commission has still not yet complied with Parliament’s request – as articulated in over half a dozen resolutions – for an independent assessment of the impact of laws, yet this is something on which we insist. If the Commission does not swing into action soon, we will have to think up other ways and means whereby we can do it ourselves.
What really is important now, as I see it, is proper benchmarking that makes it possible for us to review the reports from the Member States and say what we think is necessary in order that, through this benchmarking, the Lisbon Strategy goals be achieved even more effectively than they have been in the past."@en1
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