Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-03-Speech-1-131"
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"en.20060703.18.1-131"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank the two rapporteurs for their work.
The adverse effects of air transport on the climate are considerable, and are rapidly becoming more acute. For this reason, the Commission must lose no time in presenting us with legislative proposals on how to remedy this problem. We cannot use the argument that air transport makes up only a small percentage of total global emissions. We keep hearing this in debates on climate: that the individual emitter is only ever responsible for a proportion of the emissions. If each individual emitter talks his way out of it by arguing that he is only responsible for a small proportion, however, we shall never see an active fight against climate change.
In addition, the EU already imposes very heavy taxes, charges and environmental requirements on other modes of transport such as buses, railways and even cars. Operators of bus or railway enterprises, for example, cannot see why we are imposing heavy charges on them – relatively environmentally friendly modes of transport – yet have thus far imposed such small charges on the relatively environmentally unfriendly aeroplane. This distorts competition not only between the various modes of transport, but also – and this is a point I should like to make in view of the holiday period in Europe – between holiday regions.
There are European holiday regions to which Europeans normally travel by bus, train or car, and there are others that are primarily reached by aeroplane. In the region from which I come, representatives of hotels, other establishments providing food and drink, and other tourism enterprises openly complain that, to give an example, the taxes that a Dutchman would have to pay if he flew from Amsterdam to Turkey are very much lower than those he would pay if he took the bus to a mountainous area in Germany or France. That is a distortion of competition that we need to remedy.
We should, however, be careful in our choice of instruments for this purpose, so that we do not create new distortions of competition. For example, it is important that we take care that the instruments chosen give rise to the minimum possible distortion of competition between the European airlines and their non-European competitors. In our view, the original draft prepared by Mrs Lucas had a number of weaknesses in this regard. For this reason, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety has drafted some amendments and has also endorsed a number of amendments along the same lines from the Committee on Transport and Tourism.
Focusing our discussion exclusively or primarily on the kerosene tax is unlikely to solve the problem. We should concentrate on other instruments: namely a fundamentally redesigned emissions trading scheme that remedies the weaknesses of the present scheme, plus a mixture of other instruments. What is important is that emissions trading should cover not only flights within Europe, but also intercontinental traffic, or at least that which takes off and lands in Europe. It goes without saying that we want to see a worldwide system as soon as possible.
The weaknesses in the present Emissions Trading Scheme need to be overcome: that means less bureaucracy, a uniform allocation method throughout Europe and greater recognition of past performance. This is one of the reasons for my plea, on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, for a separate scheme – as this will mean that the shortcomings can be remedied more quickly than if the deficient scheme were adopted.
The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats wants to see an impact assessment, and I assume that the Commission will soon be presenting one. In addition, in the context of all the emphasis on emissions trading, we should like to see equal priority being given to further pursuing other measures, such as air-traffic management.
We should also reflect on the fact that one way of remedying distortions of competition is to reduce taxes on environmentally friendly modes of transport."@en1
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