Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-05-Speech-3-518"
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"en.20100505.76.3-518"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, Vice-President of the Commission, Mr Tajani, as you know, European industry as a whole has been seriously affected by the global economic and financial crisis, and in this extremely tough climate for all sectors of the economy and also for industry, we believe that Europe’s utmost priority is to restore growth and employment.
In short, we believe that we must pursue the objectives of this strategy and, within it, the objectives of the 2010-2012 action plan, so that the broad areas for action are translated into 15 specific actions, which were also proposed by the Commission, in order to lay the groundwork for introducing electric vehicles.
Today we have heard good news in the Commission’s forecasts regarding the recovery that is taking place in the whole of the European Union. Although the recovery is small, ultimately it is recovery, and in particular it must mean industrial activity.
We believe that industry – and on this I am certain that I am in agreement with the Vice-President of the Commission, because we recently spoke about this matter and he agrees with us – is and must be an irreplaceable driving force behind growth and recovery for the European economy. We therefore need to back European industry.
European industry – I repeat – can play a driving role in the economy and in order for this to be the case we firstly need to protect our industrial fabric from the tough economic climate that we are experiencing, and secondly we need to improve the competitiveness of European industry. In other words, European industry needs to return to leadership and competitiveness in the global market; it needs to back innovation and the development of new technologies. In this respect, as in many other things, it is very important for the response to these challenges to have a European perspective and a European focus.
Within the industrial sector we need to place special emphasis on the sectors with the greatest capacity for impact and growth. One of those is undoubtedly the vehicle sector, with its great capacity for transferring technology to other activities, its impact on employment, its export capacity and its potential for growth. It is therefore important that we focus on the vehicle sector, which according to the Commission’s own figures is a sector that in Europe employs 12 million people directly or indirectly and is the main private investor in research, development and innovation, investing EUR 20 billion per year.
Within the European vehicle fleet, which could amount to 270 million vehicles by 2030, there is a type of vehicle that must become a focus of attention for achieving the objectives that I was referring to before. We are talking about electric cars, which are one of the prime examples of the innovative strategies that must be considered in this sector.
The Spanish Presidency has therefore included developing electric cars as a priority on its agenda, as a preferred alternative mode of transport in order to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels derived from oil in the transport sector, and therefore make a clear and decisive move towards an energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable transport system. In order to do this the Council believes that we need a global strategy to develop the technologies, including, in this case, electric technology.
The Council is therefore promoting the debate on possible measures to adopt in order to promote the production of electric cars by the European industry, so on 8 and 9 February we took the debate to the informal Competitiveness Council meeting in San Sebastián. It was a really intense debate in which three central areas for work were identified: firstly, promoting a leading European market in the production of electric vehicles and their batteries; secondly, supporting the adoption and acceptance of electric cars as a mode of transport similar to conventional cars, putting them at the same level or seeking to achieve that in the future, as at the moment they are not at the same level and it will take some time for them to get there; and thirdly, creating the conditions for a single market in electric cars.
It was therefore agreed to invite the European Commission to draw up an action plan. In response to this invitation, the Commission – as Mr Tajani will mention later – has published its European strategy on clean and energy-efficient vehicles, a communication produced on 27 April that talks about electric technologies, other alternative technologies in this field and other matters. We would like there to be some conclusions in the Competitiveness Council in May on the Commission communication presented on 27 April, and this is our intention."@en1
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