Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-10-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20021010.1.4-017"2
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"Mr President, I should like to start by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Moreira da Silva, for the extremely fruitful cooperation. We in this Parliament have embraced Kyoto. Only four MEPs voted against. Kyoto does, however, mean
8% and not
8%, which will be difficult enough as it is. Without European measures, our fifteen governments will not succeed individually. Some eight countries have introduced national eco-taxes, but the industrial bulk consumers fall outside of these national eco-taxes. And this is precisely where the European emissions trading scheme comes in, as nearly 50% of European CO2 emissions will fall within its scope.
There has been a great deal of discussion in the United States about CO2 trading, but this has not been followed up by any positive decision-making. Hopefully, we in Europe will be taking the historical decision to take the lead in actually setting up a definite scheme. This is desperately needed, for we have been talking about European energy levies unproductively for the past decade. These have not materialised because individual governments, first the United Kingdom and now Spain, voted against. Another reason why these failed to materialise is because Commissioner Bolkestein refused to set up a leading group. In fact, this emissions trading scheme is the European energy levy scheme, but in a different guise. It is a better system, though; better than the energy CO2 levies, both from an environmental and economic point of view.
My group, the Group of the Greens, has managed to get two important amendments adopted in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. The first one is the helping hand to the United States. In Bonn in July last year, we talked to American businesses for two and a half hours. They are very interested in taking part in an international CO2 trading scheme. They believe that once President Bush is out of office, the United States will also follow suit.
The second point we managed to get adopted is that the European Commission has been tasked with developing proposals in order to extend this scheme to include households and traffic. The traffic sector, in particular, is of major importance, for we have noticed that our national governments have failed to reduce CO2 emissions in the traffic sector, and this will be necessary.
We are still at odds on one point, namely that of the allocation of emission rights. My group is in favour of an auction system. We have tabled a moderate compromise, only 15% auctioning and 85% free, but even this 15% auctioning will give a positive signal to industry that has made an early start on CO2 reduction. If the majority of my fellow MEPs endorse this amendment, then my group will be wholly satisfied."@en1
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