Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-11-Speech-2-009-000"
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"en.20120911.4.2-009-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to all the shadow rapporteurs, and also to the Commission, for their excellent levels of cooperation during the negotiations.
With cooperation from Parliament’s negotiating team, we managed to improve the directive considerably from the perspective of both human health and easing the cost burden for industry. The directive brings into effect the new sulphur limits for ships agreed four years ago by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), and they are to be made part of EU legislation. Pollutant emissions from ships will decrease substantially: ships must either switch to low sulphur fuels or clean their flue gases. In the emission restriction areas, that is to say, the Baltic Sea, North Sea and English Channel, a 0.1% sulphur limit will take effect at the beginning of 2015, and in other European seas, a 0.5% sulphur limit will be introduced in 2020.
This might be the most significant health reform introduced during the entire parliamentary term. The air pollution currently caused by ships is thought to be responsible for around 50 000 premature deaths a year. If marine sulphur emissions are reduced to almost a tenth, thousands of lives will be saved every year.
Although the main content of the directive is about streamlining EU legislation so that it more closely reflects the international agreement on the environment, it is an example of lobbying that focuses sharply on the issue. I would now like to correct what appears to be a common misconception. The new sulphur limit in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and English Channel will become law even if the EU directive is not enacted. The decision taken four years ago by the IMO is international law, and will be in force even without the directive. Most of the Member States of the EU and the other IMO Member States have already ratified it. For example, after 2015, a Finnish ship would no longer be able to enter legally the ports of other European countries, nor even those in virtually any other country.
I have the following questions for those of you who have called for the EU to oppose international environmental norms for shipping. Do you want half of all countries – including Russia, for example – to dissociate themselves from the double hull requirement for oil tankers? That would incur costs too. Or do you want tens of thousands of people to die prematurely from marine pollution? Do you want European taxpayers to pay for the costs of heart and lung disease, which is many times what cleaning up marine pollution would cost?
The directive is needed to coordinate the implementation of the IMO’s decision with monitoring in Europe. In addition, it will provide a level playing field for Europe and soften the impact on industry. The negotiated text means that Section 86 of the guidelines on State aid for environmental protection, the section on retrofitting environmental protection, needs to be applied. In this case, far more State aid than normal can be granted for the installation of flue gas scrubbers up to the end of 2014.
The directive will also level the playing field between northern and southern Europe, when they, too, switch to low sulphur marine fuels in southern Europe in 2020, even if the IMO grants a five-year grace period to seas outside the emission restriction areas.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask those of you who intend to vote against the directive this question. Do you want to deprive industry in northern Europe of this safety net that the directive has agreed on, and do you also want to deprive Europe of the improved standards of equality within it, which the directive incorporates?"@en1
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