Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-21-Speech-2-476"
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"en.20081021.44.2-476"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by saying that it is clear from this draft report that environmental protection and climate change really matter to the whole of the European Parliament and to all of its committees, but also to the Commission and the Council.
I therefore think that we can certainly get behind Mr Jørgensen when he says that everyone in Europe should pay attention to reducing pollutant emissions and that environmental and climate protection factors play an important role in the procurement of vehicles. However, the environment and climate change must also be a matter for the people, for the citizens of the European Union themselves – it must be an autonomous concern, in other words a concern for those who purchase cars or buses in the European Union. I therefore continue to wonder whether the provisions we are proposing here will really strengthen citizens’ consciences in this matter in the end, or whether they will in fact weaken them, and whether this directive actually serves the objectives we are aiming for at all, or whether it will actually just create yet more frustration at alleged Brussels bureaucracy.
As I see it, there are a multitude of examples in many European countries showing that hydrogen-powered vehicles and low-CO
vehicles are already being purchased today, without this directive – in other words, there is already an environmental awareness. I rather doubt that a directive will really bolster this, because in my view the directive does very little, and it is not true, as you claim, Mr Jørgensen, that the environmental effects will be particularly large.
Our target ought to be to raise the awareness of purchasers, and not necessarily to influence 1% of the passenger car market and 6% of the truck market with this directive. I think that the impact will be relatively small: the tendering conditions will be relatively extensive and ultimately the national implementation will dominate the decision. This means that it is quite possible, at least according to the Council’s legal services, that environmental effects will have a weighting of only 1%, and thus that the impact on the environment will be relatively small.
However, the directive will also do no harm, because in the end all those involved will be able to carry on more or less as before. That is an achievement of the Council and of the shadow rapporteur in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, Mr Hoppenstedt. The opinion of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, of which I was the draftsman, also took a position along these lines, and it was possible to make considerable improvements to the directive in the trilogue.
I therefore think that there are certainly some positive points that are worth emphasising, because some of the directive’s bureaucratic teeth have been pulled. It now provides the Member States with the option of laying down technical requirements for tendering, which gives a considerable degree of flexibility. It also states that specialised vehicles are generally not included in its scope.
Nevertheless, there is still the risk of zero weighting, and I would therefore say, in conclusion, that the directive is trying to reach the right destination by the wrong path. The amendments that came out of the compromise in the trilogue mean that – assuming it is implemented at national level in a way beneficial to contracting entities – in many Member States it will in all likelihood have almost no effect.
Those involved in the EU institutions need to ask themselves whether this directive, as it currently stands, still – following the admittedly difficult compromise in the trilogue – actually meets the goal for which it was intended. The quality of its provisions depends almost entirely on their transposition by the Member States, in which case there is no real need for Community-level regulation.
I would point out once again that, regrettably, this directive ultimately applies only to 1% of passenger car sales and 6% of commercial vehicle sales, and will therefore unfortunately not be of very great benefit to the environment."@en1
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