Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-04-Speech-3-285"
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"en.20090204.16.3-285"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank Members for a very useful debate. The Council appreciates all your contributions to the debate and will try to do its best to play its part, with the Commission, in fixing as many problems as we can in the automotive industry.
There is no doubt that there should be some short-term measures, and they are already happening at Member State level. So I think we are in agreement that those measures must be realistically sustainable financially, as well as in other respects. They should be targeted, effective and, most of all, must be carried out in a way that would be compatible with the strict state aid rules under Community law. I informed you, for example, of our initiatives regarding the scrapping scheme; so it is really important that the steps being taken are in conformity with the competition and state aid rules and avoid distortion of the single market.
My second point is that we should still bear in mind that the European automobile industry leads the world – we are exporters, those who are producing the cars – and, in this light, we should bear in mind the need for maintaining the long-term effectiveness, as well as the competitiveness of this industry. So the measures being taken must fulfil certain criteria regarding the long-term viability and competitiveness of the European industry, including investment in innovation and clean cars etc.
So the Council is making all the necessary efforts to ensure that all those efforts for RTD and innovations in the automotive industry, but also short-term measures in this report, are fully coherent with the overarching goals of the Lisbon Strategy.
My third point is that we must follow developments outside Europe. We are certainly aware that the crisis in the US automotive sector is structural and deep, and US producers are in a much worse position than European car makers. So it is obvious – and Günter Verheugen mentioned this – that the US cannot allow its automotive industry to simply die, because it would not be beneficial for us.
But we still have to work politically with our international partners, in particular through the WTO, in order to ensure that a level playing field is maintained as far as possible. The same applies to the other automobile makers and industries in Asia. We are also watching developments in Korea and Japan etc.
We are now in the run-up to the Competitiveness Council, which will take place in early March, and we hope to produce a high-quality and, of course, consensual decision for the European Spring Council, which will deal mostly with economic issues."@en1
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