Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-11-Speech-3-450"
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"en.20070711.36.3-450"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, I am certain that you too are joining in the mourning which has hit Greece since this afternoon. Three forest fire-fighters have died and one, whose entire body was burnt, is in the intensive care unit at Rethymnon Hospital.
They went to put out a fire which took hold early in the afternoon in an area without particularly heavy vegetation, in a forest of bushes. The men died and of course the vehicle in which they had driven there was burnt. It is the tragic bottom line this summer.
It is important that three people were burnt. Clearly it is self-sacrifice on the one hand of these young men; on the other hand, however, it is the defective training given.
Commissioner, I listened to you very carefully. You are one of the people in whom we trust. We do indeed protect forests at the other end of the planet. We are all interested in the Amazon, even if it is so far away; and we are interested because it produces oxygen. However, we should be much more interested in the forests which are one-tenth of the distance from the Amazon. Something must be done.
When over seven years two governments in Greece have not received a single euro, as Mrs Hübner said, from the Cohesion Fund in order to protect forests, then the initiative must be taken by the Commission. My proposal is as follows: the European Union should buy its own fire-fighting aircraft and park them in vulnerable areas. We do not want one country borrowing from another country, even if the other country has no fire at the time. There should be 100 to 150 European fire-fighting aircraft available and parked in the areas at greatest risk in order to save the forests.
It is not only Greece that suffers; Europe also suffers. It is not only Portugal that suffers; Europe also suffers. Forests are few and far between. The forests of Greece have shrunk by 50% since the political changeover, in other words over the last 33 years; there may be a lot of forests in Austria, Mrs Ferrero, but in Greece there are not that many forests.
We are committing a crime. The other day the main lung of Athens, Parnitha National Park, was burning just 15 kilometres from a place inhabited by 5 million people. We are short of oxygen and of course the dangers are not just from fires; they are also from the floods which follow when a forest has burnt down.
Europe must take more initiatives, because I greatly fear that sometimes there is an inability to deal with these topical issues. The forests are on fire. Temperatures are rising. In Greece the other day we had record temperatures for the last 100 years. You see, not everyone has come and accepted the Kyoto rules. Industry is changing the atmosphere. The atmosphere increases temperatures; the temperatures bring fires.
We must become efficient, so that we can leave our children a decent world, a world in which they can live."@en1
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