Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-043"
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"en.20070314.4.3-043"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, everyone is talking first and foremost about the recent Summit’s historic significance in terms of protecting the climate and the environment, but in so doing they overlook the fact that in other important fields, such as employment policy and the European social model, no initiatives have been agreed at all and that as a result opportunities have been missed.
The Lisbon Strategy with its focus on the global competitiveness of the European Union and other global players prevents us, in my view, from adopting an effective approach both to the fight for climate protection and to the fight against poverty and social exclusion. However, I certainly appreciate that on climate protection steps have been taken in the right direction.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that these steps are limited and that they are still in danger of being slowed down and brought to a halt. The EU is once again its own worst enemy, pushing to one side its own studies which conclude that a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed to actually prevent irreversible global warming and with it up to 86 000 additional climate-related deaths per year in the EU. The difference between 30% and 20% can be summed up as whether we are going to use the opportunity to avert a climate catastrophe or whether we are going to carry on regardless.
The problem is not that the left-wing opposition believes in principle that those in power are not doing enough of the right thing. The problem is that the wrong political course has been adopted and that the decisive initiatives are not actually being taken.
It is not surprising either that the fight against poverty, social exclusion and social divisions continued to be marginalised at the Summit and was not linked at all with consistent action to tackle global warming and the destruction of the environment.
Mr Verheugen, it is precisely this close interlinkage of social and ecological issues that the Summit failed to identify, despite what you have said today. For years, the European Commission has presented reports showing the potential jobs that could be created by using renewable energies, showing the external costs, but also clarifying the impact of ecotaxes. Levying these taxes could increase the European Union’s revenue, money which is needed for imperative social and environmental measures.
This market logic explains why, for example, in the Action Plan ‘An Energy Policy for Europe’ tackling climate change is only included at the bottom of the list of major objectives. It also explains why the European Council is calling for rapid progress to be made in the EPA negotiations, despite the Summit’s complaint about the increasing share of greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries. These free-trade agreements are, in my opinion, a brutal form of neo-colonialism, which are socially and environmentally destructive.
There are at least three conclusions: firstly, we need to make it a priority to have an up-to-date policy to tackle poverty and social exclusion and global warming, then we need to stop the EPAs and finally we need the passages in the draft constitution that promote economic deregulation, privatisation and armament to be deleted."@en1
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