Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-23-Speech-2-049"
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"en.20101123.5.2-049"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance has no objection to public funds being invested, provided that they act as a catalyst for the transformation that our society, our industry, our economy must go through to become fairer and, above all, more sustainable. We must remember that aid for uncompetitive coal mines goes against these objectives. It props up an industry that is not sustainable either economically – otherwise it would not need subsidies – or environmentally.
As Mrs in ’t Veld emphasised just now, for several decades, the coal industry has been calling for this transition to be extended, with no end in sight. Equally, my fellow German Members, for several decades, many European countries have been striving to put an end to what is an unsustainable industry. This is true of my country, France, and it is true of many other countries too. We therefore support the Commission’s proposal and, by extension, the proposal for subsidies to be used so that the workers concerned can be redeployed in a decent and dignified fashion.
However, under the pressure of what you have heard today, the Commission is preparing to beat a rather inglorious retreat, Mr Almunia, under the pressure exerted by, among others, your colleague Mr Oettinger, whose behaviour in this matter has not been that of a Member of a College responsible for defending the general interest, but of an official representative of the specific, sectoral interests of one particular country, Germany. What is more, he makes no secret of it!
To conclude, I should like to say to you that, as long as the European Union, as long as the Member States put all their energies into supporting industries of the past, with public money, which – and I hope the Irish crisis reminds us of this – has become extremely scarce, as long as we support, with this public money, 19th-century industries, we will not enable Europe to take the lead in 21st-century industries. Meanwhile, the world is changing, and changing fast."@en1
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