Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-23-Speech-3-479-000"
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"Mr President, first of all, I should say that this has been the first real plenary debate at which I have been present. I very much appreciated it and found it encouraging.
For the rest, we are working hard on the implementation of the road map. This year, we will focus heavily on water. We will launch the resource efficiency transition platform within a few days – some of you will be participating in this – and it will bring real political impetus and direction. It will rightly be an important part of the Seventh Environmental Action Programme and, of course, the urgency of implementation is the core consideration.
We will be discussing these issues at the Rio+20 conference in just a few days’ time. The conference will not, of course, be about resource efficiency, but rather about the green economy. However, it is the same story. It will not be about Europe, but about global commitments and the world as a whole, because we all understand that these things are necessary.
To conclude, if everything was all right with brown growth, we would not be discussing green growth today, but brown growth has inherent limits which are recognised today by the business sector. We, as politicians, should recognise them too. When we talk about green growth, we are actually talking about how to design future growth capable of bringing greater well-being and more benefits to society than brown growth is bringing today. I am not trying to paint a catastrophe scenario because that will not happen: we are intelligent societies and an intelligent species. But a sustainable future, my friends, is simply not a choice. It is inevitable.
Finally I would like to thank all of you – the many of you – who have stayed to the end of the debate.
While I would like to respond on many of the matters you have discussed – innovation, waterways, agriculture, fisheries, public awareness, indicators, targets, trade integration, ecodesign, food, and so on – I would need too much time. Obviously, the things we are discussing are complex. However, although I am Commissioner for the Environment, allow me to focus briefly on concerns which were raised by some of your colleagues in connection with the economy and the current situation, and why it is so important that the ideas in the Gerbrandy report are supported.
To start with the 20th century, that century actually represents the resource-intensive model. The population increased fourfold, economic output increased many, many more times, and the use of any resource you could pick up increased by approximately the same factor. So, in fact, resource prices at that time, if measured by the composite index and with the exception of world wars and the oil crisis, were constantly falling. The recognition that resources are finite was absolutely not present in that model, in which, to some extent, we are still living.
This situation is, in many ways, changing. The population is growing. Not only will we reach nine billion in 2050 but, more importantly, as the McKinsey report says, in 2030, we can expect three billion more citizens to be raised from poverty to middle-class consumption. They will have every right to that, but they will not be able to get there if we continue with the model developed in the 20th century.
What does that mean for Europe? Europe is extremely import-dependent. Over the past decade and more, the prices of many resources have been going up. That trend is expected by a majority of companies to continue in the next five years – at 85% – and the volatility of those prices is huge. So today, the European business sector is refocusing from labour productivity to resource productivity because that is the area in which businesses see the real opportunities.
In many cases, it is already recognised that energy and raw materials are critical. As for other resources – apart from water and land perhaps – it is not yet recognised in many cases that they are finite. These resources will be the focus of attention for our societies and businesses in the future. Nature is not yet so much in the picture, but it will come. That is the change which we are facing.
How is this connected to the story which we are all living through – the story of crisis and of the absolute need for growth and new jobs? As Olli Rehn said in his speech a day ago, if we had a silver bullet, we would already have fired it, but we do not have it so we have to work consistently and patiently. There are some areas in which Europe is strong and in which it could become even stronger. One such area is talent: the knowledge economy, research and innovation. The other major area is resource efficiency. Why? Because using less water, less energy and less raw materials, and producing products which can be reused and recycled makes economic sense. That is the trend which is currently very much present in the economy and in business. So ultimately, we are talking about economic resilience and environmental resilience at the same time.
I also really appreciate your highlighting the question of urgency and the need for implementation. These are matters to which we also try to draw attention when we talk about economic governance – the so-called semester story. Here too, we emphasise those issues that point in the direction of resource efficiency.
As was rightly mentioned by one of your colleagues, taxes are not to be feared. We are proposing no more and no less than the shift of taxation away from labour – and in Europe we have high labour costs – in the direction of, for example, landfill taxation, which makes more sense. The removal of environmentally harmful taxes makes all the more sense at a time when we are trying to tap all the reserves in our public finances. This is not something which we can afford to ignore today. In our discussions with Member States, we know that we bear a responsibility and we are advising them. And, by the way, in the Council conclusions of March 2011, they supported our ideas."@en1
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