Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-12-Speech-3-366"
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"en.20080312.24.3-366"2
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"Mr President, if Mrs Kauppi does not arrive she is allowing me to use her two minutes, since she is hosting an important dinner-debate.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the report by our Liberal colleague Olle Schmidt relates to a new confrontation between the House and the European Commission, which has proposed an unjustifiable increase in indirect taxes. This proposal was made by a Commissioner that I feel has completely lost touch with economic reality. Mr Kovács suggests a considerable increase in the minimum rates for unleaded petrol and gas oil. In view of the record inflation, a cause of great concern to the European Central Bank, and the economic downturn we are currently witnessing, it seems to me that this is a particularly bad time to increase the excise duty rate on gas oil and fuel oil.
Personally, I must say that I would simply have rejected this uninspiring proposal by the Commission, but majority situations being what they are in the House I was unable to do so. I support the compromise reached by the EP’s main political groups as I feel it constitutes an exercise in damage limitation.
The gradual increase of minimum rates for diesel to 359 euro for 1 000 litres until 2015 and a freeze on minimum rates for the same amount of unleaded petrol, as stipulated in the compromise, are clearly below the levels proposed by the Commission. The Commission was, in fact, suggesting 380 euro for both diesel and unleaded petrol by 2014. The rapporteur wanted to go even further in his report and was seeking minimum levels of 400 euro. I welcome the willingness to compromise on the part of our rapporteur, who brought the rates down during the discussions on his report in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
The real meat of this report is to be found in Amendment 19, in my opinion. Here we require the Member States, now applying exorbitant excise duty of over 400 euro for 1 000 litres of diesel and 500 euro for 1 000 litres of unleaded petrol, not to increase these rates any further until 2015. Therefore, without going so far as to introduce maximum rates in the proposal, for the Commission has never had the courage to propose these, we are at the very least expressing the desire for price alignment.
Mr President, there is only one way to ensure harmonisation of excise duty rates in Europe: introducing maximum and minimum rates at the same time. It serves no purpose to continue to increase minimum rates and make no effort to curtail the enthusiasm of the Member States that insist on applying extremely high rates.
Finally, if you will allow me, Mr President, I would like to make a point of order. I want to ask the Commissioner, who claimed we support his proposal, whether he lives on another planet, because we do not in fact support his proposal."@en1
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