Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-29-Speech-3-201"
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"en.20000329.12.3-201"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to thank Mr Turmes on behalf of my Group for the excellent and detailed work contained in his report. We certainly have no lack of reports. We have had the Mombaur report, the Rothe report, the former member, Mrs Bloch von Blottnitz, drafted a report, Mrs Ahern drafted a report and, if I remember correctly, I also drafted a report on this subject once. So there is no shortage of reports and they have all been translated into every possible language.
What we need now are initiatives to implement our decisions. We have decided that the share of renewable sources of energy should rise from 6% to 12%. At present, if I remember the figures correctly, we are not yet even quite at 6%, but at 5.4%. In any case, I am merely repeating the Commission’s figures. How can we do this? Biomass and hydroelectric power account for 95% of renewable energy sources in the European Union. Wind, solar energy, photovoltaic energy etc. only account for 5%! In other words, if we decide to double these figures and if we come up against purely physical limits with hydroelectric power, if we cannot build more large power stations as and where we please, and there is a limit to what we can do in the Alps, then we have to think of something else, for example a bridge with agricultural policy.
I should like to ask you, Commissioner, to build a bridge with agricultural policy, to enter into an alliance. If, for example, the enlargement of the European Union encompasses countries such as Poland, which have large agricultural areas and a high proportion of their population working in agriculture, most of whom will become unemployed over the next 10 or 20 years as these countries engage in intensive farming, then there is room for manoeuvre here. There is, of course, the question of how we can finance this, but at least we have technical room for manoeuvre.
As far as renewable sources of energy and financing them at national level is concerned, I have just a few brief comments. The systems are so different that they must, at all costs, be made compatible in the medium term, so that we can create a real European market here. Secondly, aid must be degressive. Not radically degressive perhaps, otherwise there is no end result, but it must show a downward trend in order to ensure that the best technologies are used, because there is constant technical progress even with renewable sources of energy.
I can easily imagine, and here I do not share Mr Mombaur’s view, that we may need to consider sanctions, otherwise the whole thing makes no sense. For example, we undertook at Kyoto to adhere to certain quotas. No one can be punished for failing to keep to the quotas. Had we introduced the euro like that, if no sanctions had been imposed for failing to comply with requirements, the euro would not have been a success. In the case of renewable sources of energy or the CO2 policy, nothing will be achieved in the long run without sanctions. We cannot enter into commitments willy-nilly and then fail to honour them. I keep coming back to this: without sanctions, this joint energy policy, because in the final analysis that is what it is, will not function. It is perhaps an unpleasant thought, but it will not function otherwise."@en1
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