Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-11-21-Speech-3-333-000"
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"en.20121121.24.3-333-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, Minister, let me first thank you for the draft resolution on Doha and the continued support from Parliament and a very strong dedication to try to give Europe a strong voice in these international negotiations. I would also like to thank Mr Groote for his remarks and his very strong support.
A major challenge for next year will be to explore how all parties will take on legally binding mitigation commitments in a way which is fair and consistent with their responsibilities and capabilities while being consistent with the science and thereby with the 2° target. In that respect we need to encourage our partner countries to start preparing for domestic policies accordingly or the consequence will be that we have a nice 2° target that we will not manage to stay below.
It is clear that when we leave Doha there must be a very clear idea, a very clear plan of who will have to do what and when between now and 2015 in order to get the agreement done by 2015.
Let me also say that we are all afraid of this looking into ‘low ambition’ and for many good reasons, also many developing countries are very concerned about that. That is why we have tried to push the incoming Qatari Presidency very much to secure that we will get a ministerial round table in Doha where ministers will sit down and discuss how to add on to ambition, and there are numerous things we could do.
The Cyprus Minister already mentioned some of them. We could also have cooperation on phasing out fossil fuel subsidies; we could include new gases. There are a whole range of things which can be done – also in the shorter term – and that is what we will want to push for. Sustainable energy for all as a follow-up to Rio+20 is another example of things that would serve several purposes at the one time, including the climate purpose.
Can I say on climate financing there is no doubt that it is also very important when we come to Doha that we can prove in black and white – and we will present such a report proving this – that in Europe we have actually delivered on our fast-start climate financing pledges from Copenhagen. We have at this stage delivered a bit more than EUR 7.1 billion out of the EUR 7.2 billion pledged, and I know that the two remaining countries who have not yet come up with their bit for 2012 are working very hard to ensure that that can happen before Doha.
I also strongly hope that the EU will maintain its efforts next year and in the coming years. This could also be secured by further mainstreaming climate considerations into development policy, but we should not fool ourselves. We will very much be watched to see whether some of our Member States and the EU as such are ready now, in Doha, to send some very clear signals about what can be expected financially in the years after the fast-start financing.
As you know the Durban package was only possible because a group of countries drawn from all regional groupings and representing the ‘centre of gravity’, so to speak, came together last year in the spirit of ambition and compromise. In the year since Durban I have tried to continue to work with this Group. The Commission and the then Presidency, Denmark, convened a meeting in Brussels last May and we repeated that exercise with our good friends and allies among the developing countries in a session in New York. We are really trying to work together where we have shared interests in order to maximise pressure on those who need to move their position.
Finally, Mr President, not all climate conferences, not all climate COPs, are very spectacular and can deliver very grand decisions, but that does not mean that they are not important. In Durban last year we knew that when we would meet in Doha it would be immediately after an American election, it would be just after the appointment of a new Chinese leadership.
In that sense you can say that it is a preparatory COP where we are laying the building blocks for the future regime and trying to make progress on that. I really hope that is what we will achieve in Doha: handling the elements, creating the building blocks for the 2015 agreement which is incredibly important and in that sense that Doha will continue to deliver on future steps.
I think that in order to achieve that, it is as important as it was last year and in the previous years that we can speak with one voice in Europe and that we have this very good cooperation: Parliament, Presidency and Council and the European Commission. I think that last year we proved how much we can achieve when we all take part in the work in Doha. I look forward to your cooperation when we come to those two challenging weeks ahead of us.
I am also looking forward to working with Parliament when we come to Doha. Some people tend to believe that while we have been so busy handling the economic crisis, maybe the climate crisis miraculously solved itself or just went away. For those people, there was some serious news today when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) presented its new Emissions Gap Report and nobody should be surprised that it clearly shows that we are not coming closer to where we needed to be now.
We are distancing ourselves from it when we talk about it worldwide. The gap is widening. This is the context in which the Doha Conference will be held. That is of course also why we must do everything we can in Doha to secure the hard-won progress last year in Durban. The very carefully crafted package in Durban must be kept and we must move forward with the climate agenda.
Among other things this means that we must adopt a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol as part of the transition to the new future regime. We must agree the next steps towards adopting a legally binding agreement applicable to all parties by 2015, including through a streamlined negotiation process so that all negotiations can take place under the Durban Platform. This means that the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) should be closed down and that when we leave Doha the focus will be on what should be the content in the 2015 agreement. Then of course – very importantly as well – we must address the mitigation gap and raising mitigation ambition also in the period up to 2020.
On the Kyoto Protocol, I think there can be no doubt that Europe is ready to sign up to that. We can do immediate application. There is not doubt about that. I know that some say that you can also ratify when you come to Doha, but some of you will recall why in Bali in 2007 the whole world agreed that we should agree the new future regime at the latest by 2009 because we all knew that it would take years to ratify whatever the outcome.
That is of course still the case: ratification processes take some time and I think that more and more parties outside Europe understand that we have legal democratic procedures that we have to follow but the reality is that, as of 1 January, we will apply a new second commitment period and follow the Kyoto rules and legislation.
Of course it is important for this Conference of the Parties (COP) in Doha not to be reduced to a Kyoto COP only. It must also deliver progress on the other elements of the package from Durban.
We are working hard to reach agreement on outstanding Kyoto issues including the length of the second commitment period, access to Kyoto market mechanisms as well as environmental integrity related to the carry-over of Assigned Amount Unit carbon credits (AAUs) from the first commitment period.
To make progress towards the 2015 agreement the EU has called for submissions and further informal sessions early next year in order to take forward key emerging themes."@en1
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