Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-06-Speech-3-353"
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"en.20000906.14.3-353"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to start by congratulating the Commission on a very timely and far-reaching communication which explicitly acknowledges the rapidly growing environmental impact of air transport and clearly recognises that this growth is unsustainable. Before coming to the proposals contained in my report, it would be helpful to remind ourselves of some of the key issues in this debate. Essentially, the problem can be expressed very simply: aviation is growing at an unsustainable rate. It is a serious environmental threat and not only is it a problem, but we are actually subsidising that sector, which is making the situation very much worse.
In terms of aviation growth, air traffic is forecast to almost double in the next 15 years. When you think what that means in terms of congestion and environmental impact, then clearly that is a nightmare. To take a case that I know well in the UK, the government's own air traffic forecasts which were published in June this year show total passenger numbers at UK airports rising from 160 million in 1998 to 400 million in just over 20 years' time. That increase of 240 million is equivalent to four new airports the size of London Heathrow or eight new airports the size of London Gatwick. Obviously the environmental consequences of such expansion would be totally unacceptable and these projections only serve to show the nonsense of assuming the possibility of continuous exponential growth.
What are the environmental impacts of this growth? On the noise side, we know that as far as ordinary people on the ground are concerned those changes that have been introduced to make individual aircraft quieter are actually in danger of being cancelled out by the increasing frequency of each noise incident. On the emission side, air travel is the world's fastest growing sources of greenhouse gases which cause climate change. That may only count for 3% of total emissions today, but by 2050 it is projected it could account for up to 15% of total global emissions or even more. You would think that litany of environmental problems, coupled with a projected growth that is clearly unsustainable, might have produced some measures to discourage the exponential growth of this sector, but not a bit of it. On the contrary, global aviation policies are actually encouraging the unrestrained growth of this sector.
Aviation is massively subsidised. Unlike motor vehicles or trains, airlines pay no tax on their fuel. Indeed it has been calculated that the European aviation sector receives about EUR 30 billion in subsidies every year.
To mention some of the key points of my report very briefly: on noise, current noise standards for new aircraft have actually been in existence since 1977 and there is therefore an urgent need for more stringent standards. I am recommending that the EU uses the World Health Organisation's own guidelines for Community noise to develop new guidelines for daytime and night-time exposure by 2003. On emissions, a perfectly feasible target for the developed countries would be to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions from aviation by 5% on 1992 levels by 2012, which is the first budget period according to the Kyoto Protocol. This would be a first step to reverse the current exemption of international aviation from responsibilities.
On subsidies, the report makes it clear that in principle we support the taxing of aircraft fuel at an international level, but we recognise that there are political difficulties with this because of the need to get international agreements at ICAO. In the light of those political difficulties, we are proposing instead an environmental charge based on the polluter-pays principle. In fact, such a charge would be a more subtle instrument since it could actually be calculated to reflect both the amount of fuel used and also, by factoring in the efficiency of the aircraft's engine, the amount of pollutants generated. Indeed the political difficulties of introducing such a measure would disappear since it is perfectly within the rights of the EU to introduce a levy on all flights starting from airports in the EU.
One final but very important point, you will hear the airlines say that all this is very well but it should be undertaken by ICAO, the international body. The fact that it is an international body means that it moves at a very slow pace and what the Commission communication proposes – and what I endorse in my report – is the principle that some of the more industrialised regions like the EU should be able to move more swiftly towards more stringent standards than other regions like the developing countries. This does not spell the end of ICAO. What it does is to introduce some flexibility into ICAO which is perfectly consistent with other international organisations. Others do just the same thing.
The reaction of the airlines is to ask why we are picking on them. In fact, clearly the opposite is the case. The airlines have been getting away with not paying their way for over 50 years. Meanwhile, other Members of this House are quick to claim that the measures I propose will have devastating effects on the European aviation sector. That is nonsense. An environmental charge along the lines I have described would not have adverse effects on competition because it is levied on all airlines using EU airports regardless of their origin.
They claim it will have crippling effects on the European economy and that too is nonsense. The aviation sector is responsible for some jobs but it should not be forgotten that making aviation pay its way in terms of taxation will create thousands of jobs in other sectors. So I commend this report to you."@en1
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