Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-17-Speech-3-174"
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"en.20081217.16.3-174"2
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"−
I will take this opportunity to thank the honourable Members for the recent vote in which the European Parliament clearly showed their support for my ‘benchmark’ model. I have been speaking in favour of it for a long time now and was the first to suggest it be applied to emissions trading. Although the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy narrowly voted against, while the rejection by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety was rather more substantial, life is full of surprises. Now the benchmark will qualify as a criterion once it has been through the Council.
Moreover, that is all to the good. The Commission’s original proposal and the position adopted by the Committee on the Environment on emissions trading both lacked equilibrium, as they put European production in a position that made it hard to compete in global markets without any special climatic benefit. This would clearly have meant not just job losses, but an environmental disadvantage, as it would have put pressure on firms to switch production to countries outside the emission limits.
Now the decision has opened the door to a fairer and environmentally more far-sighted approach. Everything is still open, however, and we will now start to see confirmation of who will reap the benefits of the improvements made.
The environmental targets are unchanging, and they are challenging. This is not an easy objective for industry, but then it is not supposed to be.
In any case, it is pointless talking about free emission allowances, because the benchmarks – the yardsticks – are ambitious. So they should be, because otherwise we will not have a system that would persuade companies to join the race for technology that produces the fewest emissions.
The complaint made by the environmental lobby that the package has been watered down frankly seems unreasonable to me, when we consider that targets are being observed and industrial sectors have a declining emissions ceiling. That is irresponsible talk, but surely not everyone is interested in taking responsibility. It is enough that the world is being stamped on."@en1
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