Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-400"
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"en.20070522.31.2-400"2
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"Mrs Lulling, you have many good sides, but sometimes you also go wide of the mark, and that is what you are doing with this report. I shall recommend my group to reject your proposal as a whole and thus to follow the Commission.
In a report on price levels of alcohol, account must also be taken of the significance that increased drinking would have for public health. However, public health is a subject about which nothing is said. To abolish excise duty on alcohol, including beer, would be to give out entirely the wrong signals. We know that the harm caused by alcohol is on the increase, and we know that ever more young people in Europe are literally drinking themselves to death, and not only in the Nordic countries.
Every day, beer, wine and spirits – including half a million cans of beer and 65 000 bottles of spirits - flood into Sweden. This is due to the big differences in alcohol taxation. Higher common excise duties within the EU can play an important role in this area. The cost margin means a lot in this context, because the consumers we are talking about are price-conscious.
European integration must not take place on the basis of alcohol tourism. I am not asking for the EU to introduce Swedish-style taxes – that would be an alien idea to me – but what I do request is consideration for, and solidarity with, other countries and their inhabitants. That is why excise duties on alcohol need increasingly to be harmonised.
We Europeans drink more alcohol than anyone else in the world. Last year, the Commission presented a strategy for reducing the harm caused through alcohol. If we in this House want to adopt the Commission’s approach, we have only one thing to do, and that is to reject this report."@en1
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