Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-13-Speech-1-058"
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"en.20040913.5.1-058"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am very grateful to the Commissioner for pointing out that every instrument is needed in order to guarantee climate protection, and for describing the ICAO goals as contrary to all the goals that we in the EU have set. Let me thank you again for that. I see this debate as happening at the right time and in the right place, for we must do everything possible to prevent the resolution that the United States of America and other countries are strenuously backing from gaining majority support at the conference in Montreal.
Let me make three points in relation to this. In the first place, this is about the EU’s autonomy in matters concerning Europe. What Europe does is Europe’s business, and the European Union, the Commission and the Council, have to decide what that is and determine what this continent’s future requires. That is not something that other states out there may do; the decision, then, is for us to take, and, as regards your decision, I wish you the great success for which you have been striving. I also hope that you will win the day.
My second point is that the EU has always attached a very high value to climate protection and seen it as very important. It is for that reason that the European Union signed the Kyoto Protocol. That, as you know, was an ambitious thing to do, and we must do all we can to fulfil it. That being so, it is quite intolerable that the air transport industry, a threat to the climate and to climate protection, should be exempted from the measures; that really is making a gamekeeper out of a poacher, and we want none of it. We know that air travel is a danger, just as we know that railways are a relatively environmentally-friendly system of transport. We cannot have rail transport laden down with taxes, including levies on emissions, while air transport, of all things, is not, and hence we want the same law for both. Priority must be given to the mode of transport that does not harm the environment, rather than to the one that does."@en1
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