Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-12-Speech-1-076-000"
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"en.20110912.21.1-076-000"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur, thank you for the document in front of us and for your strategies. Thank you to the other Members, too, for all your input. I am of the view that we have a very useful document here. To be honest, I think that we could take this a lot further. It is a very important issue.
When we look at the current economic and financial crisis, what tends to get overlooked is the fact that the next crisis is already looming in its wake, a crisis that we could prevent right now, if we had the right strategy. I am talking about the shortage of raw materials – things which all the emerging economies would obviously also like to get their hands on – a shortage which is already putting our future growth, once this crisis is over, under pressure.
What really pleases me is that this report pays a lot of attention to this weakness of the EU, to the fact that we are currently so dependent. It is also good that we are focusing on our own strengths. How are we dealing with our own waste? What else could we still do internally, within Europe? The report contains a call for innovation, which is essential if we are to succeed in keeping raw materials within our own territory and reprocessing them.
The only problem is that we need to flesh out what exactly we mean by innovation, because the definition in the report is not yet concrete enough. What exactly do we mean by that? Where is the actual paradigm shift that Europe has been clamouring for, as a response, certainly, to this financial and economic crisis and as a response to the many different ways in which we are dependent? We need a behavioural change, a shift in industry and amongst the citizens themselves. How can we achieve that? We need a totally different economic model. I am not talking here about just the governance structures of banks or governments. No, what I actually mean is substantial intervention in the economy: for example, a ‘lease’ society, where all products automatically come back to us in another form. This would, however, be a genuine redistribution of our burden: it would, for example, provide that extra little incentive that is necessary to get us to purchase higher-quality, more sustainable and more environmentally friendly products; much more stringent ecodesign guidelines.
I will be particularly pleased with what you have to say if you say that we have to do everything in a way which shows respect for nature. Because that is really important. We tend to opt far too quickly for virgin land, those nature reserves that could still be used for mining, but who says that urban dwellers cannot provide for themselves from the goldmines in their cities? Yes, we are already living on top of a goldmine of waste, and that could turn out to be our urban mine. We could be living on top of a source of something that we could use. Let us therefore first of all concentrate on those areas, and not just on virgin land.
All of you have come up with sound proposals
proposals which I, indeed, hope will become a reality, such as the quality mark, the chain of custody, the concept of ultimate responsibility, proper social labelling, paying more attention to illegal shipments out of Europe and, above all, a great deal of innovation."@en1
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