Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-15-Speech-3-205"
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"en.20030115.11.3-205"2
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"Mr President, you have given me a keynote to use. Of all those who have spoken so far, I live the furthest to the south, and if it was not for the Alps, I would have a clear view of the Mediterranean. So I claim the right to speak on behalf of the Members from the South and to assert that we too have an interest in the North's well being. I take it for granted that you, Mr President, agree with me!
I would like to be brief and to touch on the following topics, the first of which is energy. What matters here is that the Baltic Ring should at last come into being, with an electricity interconnection right round the Baltic. That would be a great help to us and also to the Baltic States. The second point I want to make is that we must at all cost prevent any mishap involving oil or gas in the far north. It would take many years for nature to recover, far longer than would be the case in the south. That is something we must avoid come what may.
My third point is the main one: disarmament. Quite a bit has already been said about the submarines that are rusting away in north-western Russia and the plans we have for dealing with them, for which I would like to give the Commission every credit. I do, though, want to suggest to the Commission that they should make a statement setting out what disarmament measures they and the Council are jointly considering, what has been decided on, and what is being done through our Budget, so that this House can have a debate on all these measures, which we are co-financing. The Commission deserves thanks for having organised a major disarmament conference in Brussels at the beginning of December, which I attended, and I am amazed at the vast number of initiatives that there are. It is only right, though, that this House should discuss them and make them known to a wider public.
If I might return to the subject of energy, I would like to bring a paradox to your attention. Here in Western Europe, we are replacing coal and atomic power with gas, which we will, in future, be buying increasingly from Russia. The Russians are selling us more and more gas, because it earns them more money than if they use the gas at home – where, however, they are using coal and atomic power instead. Taking all these things together, then, no savings are being made either in atomic power or in CO2. I ask that we in this House should take seriously the question of whether our policy is the right one, and that this issue should be on the agenda for the dialogue with the Russians on energy. What is going on here is quite simply absurd, at any rate from an outsider's point of view. I just wanted to point that out."@en1
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