Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-288"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20030701.10.2-288"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, Commissioner, emission allowances are not naturally occurring phenomena and they have not been the result of human labour. They represent an administratively allocated abstract right to pollute the atmosphere. Emissions trading is not a market mechanism. It serves to reallocate emissions among the polluters, but not reduce them. The most despicable way of allocating emissions is by auctioning them. Things could easily turn out the way they did when the radio spectra were auctioned off: the air space was bought and sold and all the operators ran into trouble. We must not let that happen to European industry. As the system covers just carbon dioxide emissions it will be free to release other pollutants into the atmosphere. There are many questions the directive does not answer. I will mention some of them. The emission allowances are to be sold on the stock market. Should an emission allowance, as a financial instrument, be regarded as being the equivalent of a share or an option? How will its sale or non-sale be taxed? How will emissions be recorded in company balance sheets? How will they be treated with regard to private individuals’ income and wealth taxation? Indeed, will private individuals also be able to buy them? We need to ask whether the EU will generally have the power to decide all these matters in a way that treats everyone in the same harmonised way. Emissions trading will be done on the stock market and stock exchange activity always involves speculation. There is a danger that the price of an emission allowance will be determined by speculators having no links with industry or any other source of emissions production. Then industry in the Member States might fall victim to the mechanism proposed by the United States of America, in which US industry is not involved and profits and losses depend crucially on the first administrative allocation of emission allowances. The Directive on emissions trading is a raw fruit, which should have been allowed to ripen longer. There are many Members in our group who do not believe in the trading of emission allowances on the stock market. Many Members, however, will vote in favour of the compromise amendments, because they are better than Parliament’s report."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph