Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-31-Speech-3-078"
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"en.20070131.19.3-078"2
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"Mr President, the Presidency has got off to a very good start on this issue. I do not doubt the commitment of the Minister in any way at all, and was very pleased to hear the strong words from the Chancellor just the other week. But of course the rhetoric has got to be matched by the reality, and Germany has a problem. It has the problem of the national allocation plan, first of all. I realise there is a problem as regards a difference in interpretation between the Presidency and the Commission, but one way or another it does not help with you in the hot seat not having a national allocation plan approved. So Minister, please get it sorted.
Then of course there is the issue today of the German car industry and the rhetoric in the various papers. I have just come from and will return to chairing a hearing on reducing CO2 emissions from motor vehicles. The clear message from many of the experts speaking is that 120 grammes per kilometre is perfectly realisable within the five-year timescale that we are talking about at a cost of a thousand euros: that is the estimate that many of those experts are putting on it. And that is a thousand euros with a quick return for car-owners because of fuel economy and savings at the petrol pump.
I ask you, how often in environment debates have we heard industry coming along and saying ‘this is impossible, this is the end of our industry if you do this, European Union; this is going to cost an extravagant amount, European Parliament’? And so often we introduce the legislation and somehow the problems are dissipated, industry copes with it and we become more competitive and our position across the world is strengthened. I suspect the same thing is happening once again. Industry exaggerates, it always does.
We talk about dealing with this issue of climate change. If we are looking at the real price of a car, which has come down so significantly over the past 20 or 30 years, and we are saying that to reduce emissions by 25% would cost an extra thousand euros, still leaving the real price of a car at less than it was thirty years ago, can we not bear that price? How can we look at our children and say that we were not prepared to pay just a little bit more to make such a big difference?"@en1
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