Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to use my opening words to express my thanks for the excellent cooperation I have enjoyed with the draftsmen and the shadow rapporteurs from all the political groups. It is due to this cooperation alone that we were able to reach a good compromise in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. I believe that this directive will create the conditions for climate change and the Kyoto Protocol to stop being a purely theoretical concern in Europe and become an essential strand of the environmental and economic policy of all the Member States. Essentially, this directive will form the basis of the carbon economy; the winners will be those who are able to achieve the same levels of production with the fewest emissions. I therefore congratulate the Commission, in the person of Commissioner Margot Wallström, on the initiative of proposing this directive, particularly because it will significantly reduce the cost of complying with Kyoto in the European Union. As a matter of fact, I believe that proving that this system works, proving that this system will reduce the cost of complying with Kyoto in the European Union, will be the best way for us to convince our US friends to abide by the Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, despite considering the proposal for a directive to be positive on the whole, there are areas in which Parliament wishes both to go further and to improve the basic proposal and a broad compromise was reached on these matters. Consequently, rather than putting forward my own point of view, I am speaking on behalf of all of those who adopted this compromise. Firstly, I think it is important that this directive has quantified targets for compliance and we feel it is crucial that there should be a maximum ceiling on emission allowances per Member State, on a linear curve converging with the Kyoto Protocol. Secondly, we feel it is important that the Member States should be able to add to the sectors and activities included in the system. I am thinking about the voluntary ‘opting in’ of sectors such as transport or small and medium-sized enterprises in the Member States that feel it would be appropriate. Thirdly, the use of credits must be completely prohibited in the directive’s first implementation period. Fourthly, we consider it important that the directive should cover all six greenhouse gases, not only carbon dioxide, provided that these six gases are included on the basis of transparent criteria, identical to those used for carbon dioxide. Fifthly, we believe it is important that the chemicals and aluminium industries should also be included in this directive. Lastly, with regard to the areas in which we feel that the Commission’s proposal ought to be extended and made more ambitious – and I am referring to the initial emissions allowance allocation system – I think that a hybrid system based on free allocation but with some auctioning (5% in the first period, 15% in the second period) is better than a 100% free allocation as advocated in the proposal for a directive, not only in the economic strand, but also in the environmental strand and as regards reducing distortion of competition. I have left what I believe to be the most important issue to the end: legal involvement. It is my view that this system can only work if it is legally binding, in other words, mandatory. I believe the Committee on the Environment achieved a good compromise on legal involvement, a binding system with the temporary exclusion – with limits on both the duration and the conditions – of some companies in the first period. I believe the adoption of Amendments Nos 75 and 81 to be quite unjustified and even dangerous, because this would basically mean turning a binding system into a voluntary one and consequently increasing distortions of competition, reducing the liquidity in the market, increasing the price per tonne of carbon dioxide and reducing the economic efficiency of the system. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE