Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-14-Speech-3-297"
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"en.20060614.19.3-297"2
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".
If I may start, Mrs Schierhuber, with your first question, on the subject of certification and labelling, we are, in creating a new energy policy for Europe, right at the beginning, not only in Europe, but also around the world. It will be for us to take care, by implementing certification systems, to ensure sustainable alternative energy supplies from other parts of the world, since all the things to which you have referred – the deforestation of the rain forest and the production of palm oil subject to social and environmental criteria – are things we see as undesirable.
A number of approaches are being adopted; in Austria, for example, we have defined cross-compliance conditions derived from agricultural reform as the basis for energy production and also for the admixture of biodiesel and bioethanol, the consequence of which is that anything produced subject to eco-social criteria and production conditions, and to European standards, can be added irrespective of which parts of the world it comes from. Over the coming weeks, the issue will be surfacing in the WTO, too, of how certification and legal bases be implemented in such a way that they meet the requirements of international trade and the WTO, and this is where detailed scrutiny is going to be needed; indeed, Commissioner Piebalgs is being no less energetic than the EU officials and those at national level with responsibility for this, in seeking clarity in this matter in order not to settle this issue as prematurely as some others have been, only for us then to suffer defeats on the legal front and thus lose the market. Certification and labelling are core issues.
As regards your second question on research, development and the research framework programme, a greater emphasis will be placed on alternative energy in the infrastructure as a whole as part of the innovation and research strategy, from the extraction of the raw materials right through to production and use made of it in technology. As is also envisaged in the sphere of research and development, we will apply a great deal more effort to moving this forward.
If I may turn to the jobs issue, what, according to the estimates, is going to happen if greater reliance is placed on alternative forms of energy? As my own country’s minister for agriculture and the environment, I enjoy the strategic advantage of being in an absolute win-win situation, in that the use of alternative sources of energy not only has the effect of bringing about a reduction in CO2, and thereby making a substantial contribution to achieving the Kyoto targets, but also makes full use of the resources in rural areas – particularly the more isolated ones in Europe – and creates jobs in them. An extra 30 000 jobs – that is the figure indicated by studies carried out by the European Union and other bodies, if we are consistent in proceeding with the achievement of alternative energy targets."@en1
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