Mr President, we are all familiar with the principle of substitution, the substitution of a more environmentally friendly or more healthy product for another one which is environmentally damaging or damaging to health. In many ways the use of fluorinated gases has already exhibited the principle of substitution, given that many applications that were previously used with CFCs have been substituted with HFCs. As we know, CFCs are much more environmentally damaging than HFCs, being ozone-depleting gases which we have very successfully grappled with under the auspices of the Montreal Protocol. HFCs are greenhouse gases like CO2 and, as the Commissioner said, whatever action we take on control of fluorinated gases, it cannot be at the expense of the action we need to take to control CO2. HFCs are a drop in the ocean in relation to CO2. First of all I would like to make a point about the legal base. There has been much discussion about this, but I am firmly of the opinion that Article 95, the single market, is the correct legal base. If we were to use Article 175 it would make marketing of products containing these gases almost impossible across the whole of the European Union. Whilst I understand the situation, for example, in Austria, where they have gone further, in the interests of the single market we should maintain the legal base. There are a number of applications of HFCs, from air conditioning to air-sole trainers and to aerosol fake snow, for example, which we had a little bit of fun about in the press at Christmas. But this proposal is primarily about containment, not banning. In fact there are a number of applications where no alternative is possible, for example fire protection and the use of sulphur hexafluoride in switch gear. If we were to go along with one of the proposals that the Group made, the lights would go out all over Europe! With regard to vehicle air conditioning – and it is one side-effect of global warming that more people have air conditioning in their cars – the proposal was to replace HFC134a, with a global warming potential of 1300, with the more environmentally benign HFC152a, with a global warming potential of 140. I can see people in the gallery already nodding off, and that is why Parliament decided that we should take a bold step to actually phase out the use of HFCs in air conditioning and substitute them with the new developing technology involving CO2. Under the Commission's proposal there was a very complex quota system which looked as if it should start in 2009. In practice, however, as 20% of the vehicle fleets of most manufacturers are not fitted with air conditioning, these manufacturers would have met the first step of the quota system without doing anything. So actually the Commission's proposal would have started in 2010. The quota system is complex and would only have worked very well with a company that had a range of products which fitted conveniently into these 20% steps. Most manufacturers do not have a product line-up that fits in quite that way. And of course there was a massive loophole in the whole system, a loophole big enough to drive a Rolls Royce through, in that manufacturers could as an alternative pay a 200 euro fine for not complying with the directive. I suspect the manufacturers of some large expensive cars would do that rather than spend money on re-engineering. We also have the fact that HFC152a is flammable, which may cause some problems with regard to safety. That was not the final solution, and we think that using CO2, maybe a little bit later, would be a much more effective compromise. That is why I am very pleased that the Group has prevailed on me and made me see sense and that we have Compromise Amendment No 112, which says that, based on type-approval, we should phase out the use of HFCs and substitute with CO2 from 2012, with a two-year exemption, or two-year delay at least, for some of the smaller manufacturers – what we call the Porsche exemption –, moving towards CO2, which is a much better goal, not only environmentally, but politically too. We also need some changes to the first line of Annex 2, which I am sure the sessional services will take care of if the compromise amendment goes through, substituting '50' for the global warming potential and putting type-approval in. Not all air conditioning systems are mobile: some of them are in stationary applications such as buildings like this one. This monstrous waste of taxpayers' money is cooled using HFCs! In the case of buildings, it is important that we control leakage, and inspection and control of leakages are included in the Commission's proposal, which we support. But we should also reward good practice by reducing the number of inspections where leakage is not occurring, as well as stepping up the number of inspections where we have leaks. Finally, I would like to thank Mr Lange and Mrs Corbey for making me see sense, and Mr Davies for finally coming round to our way of thinking. It has been a very interesting journey and I just hope that the people in the gallery do not think we spend all our time talking about these boring technical subjects.

Political group: PPE-DE