In numele grupului liberal din Parlamentul Europei, dna Valean a luat azi cuvantul in plen la dezbaterea concluziilor summitului Consiliului European de pe 13-14 martie. Iata mai jos, in original, transcriptul acestui speech:
One thing is certain – without the pressure of collective action and accountability Member States would lack the will to act on climate change. Yet the inconvenient truth for the EU is that summit conclusions are often long on rhetoric and short on delivery.
We already see signs of Member States looking for ways to cut corners and costs on last year’s political commitments even though the Stern report of 2006 warned that the costs of action now are far less than the costs of inaction later.
Some of the language in the final conclusions suggests that the urgency and imperative of responding to climate change is already waning. This would spell disaster both for our climate and credibility.
Somewhat overlooked in this debate is energy efficiency – the simplest and most cost-effective way of reducing our overall emissions. An early draft of the Council conclusions committed Member States to a 10% reduction in energy use in government buildings and car fleets, yet now reads simply as “substantial progress”. It would be a small but significant gesture that governments are leading by example.
The Spring summit each year between now and 2020 should provide a scoreboard of progress in reducing our demand on scarce resources.
Fiscal instruments to stimulate better environmental behaviour should indeed be exploited. ETS has proved its worth and been taken up as a global standard for providing economic incentives for emissions reductions. Green taxes such as reduced VAT rates can also have a similar effect by stimulating demand for low-consumption vehicles and domestic appliances.
Turning to the economic aspects of the Summit, the conclusions boast that the fundamentals of the EU economy remain sound. Yet this is not how the outlook is perceived by many of our citizens facing higher bills and growing indebtedness which should caution us against excessive optimism.
The underlying principles of the Lisbon Strategy are worth recalling – structural reforms, fiscal discipline and targeted investment in productive areas that will deliver future growth. EU Member States remain (with 1 or 2 honourable exceptions) well short of their commitment to spending 3% of their GDP on R&D.
Now we talk of a Fifth Freedom for knowledge and innovation but we should not forget that we have not yet managed to complete the original Four Freedoms – especially in the area of free movement of labour and services across the whole of the EU.
Finally, support for SMEs is rightly identified as key to economic growth and innovation. We must enable them to reap the full benefit from the Internal Market. The Council could achieve much for European competitiveness by bringing the long-running disputes over a European patent and private company statute to a successful conclusion.
The Council conclusions cautiously declare that the challenge is to deliver. The Parliament for its part certainly will.
