Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-06-Speech-3-222"
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"en.19991006.7.3-222"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I support the joint resolution submitted by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection, and unlike others in my Party, I also support the section which deals with an CO2 energy tax. The CDU Party in Germany believes, and we have recently discussed this again with our Chairman, Mr Schäuble, that we should stop continuing to work towards a European solution, just because at the national level, left-wing and Green governments are abusing the issue of environmental taxes.
But we should not concentrate solely on the tax issue, as seems to have happened in the Committee to some extent, as well as in our Party. There are many aspects of reducing CO2 which we will not be able to resolve through a tax alone, perhaps not through taxation at all. I will give the example of the stand-by switch which is taken up in paragraph 9 of the motion for resolution which I proposed. Between five and ten per cent of the European Union’s energy consumption is wasted because we do not switch off our televisions and other electrical appliances, but leave them on stand-by. Five to ten per cent represents a huge contribution to energy savings, which can be achieved here if we either turn the appliances off or come up with new technical means in order to achieve a reduction in energy consumption.
This will not be achieved though, by means of a tax. When someone buys a television, the question of how much energy it uses on stand-by is not generally of prime importance. They have other criteria in mind, and this is why we also need technical solutions to this problem.
However, I would like to ask those of you who want to see solutions other than a tax not to raise objections again when we are holding a discussion on technical alternatives to stand-by on the grounds that this is a European regulation and you did not want that either. We must do something if we are to appear credible in the negotiations.
Nor should we discuss only CO2, because if my information is correct, 50% of the greenhouse effect is caused by other greenhouse gases. I think that we have not made this sufficiently clear in the discussion. We should give this point much greater consideration."@en1
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