Mr President, time is running out for the earth. In spite of a whole range of summits and conferences, few people can dispute that we are today a long way from achieving the objective of sustainable development. We are now in actual fact still further from that objective than when the Brundtland report was presented in 1987 and when the Rio Conference took place. The opposite ought, of course, to be the case. The other day, the OECD, which is not, of course, an environmental organisation, pronounced that ‘All major global ecological indicators are negative’. Things are just as bad when it comes to poverty and social development. The number of poor people is increasing, not decreasing. In the light of this, the Johannesburg Summit is very important, but, as has been indicated in this House, hopes are fairly low-key. The machinery of negotiation is sluggish, and interest on the part of the American administration is also anything but lively. As Mrs Hulthén said, the Spanish Presidency is unfortunately not represented in Parliament today, a fact which also does not indicate a particularly high degree of interest in this issue. What are the reasons why we are still such a long way from achieving a sensible balance between economic growth, social development and consideration for the environment? There are two main reasons. First of all, there is strong resistance to implementing all the measures which, in a whole range of conferences, government says it recommends: for example, doing away with subsidies to industries which are harmful to the environment; incorporating environmental costs into prices; establishing clear environmental criteria for our export credits guarantee boards so that we do not export non-sustainable systems to the developing countries; and, in general, encouraging, rather than discouraging, activities that take the environment into account. Economic regulations are not at present leading us in the direction we want to go, but we do little about this. Mr Lannoye’s report, which I welcome, contains a series of proposals concerning the route which might be followed. The EU must push ahead in this respect, as on a range of issues concerning the fight against poverty. Otherwise, there will be very little in the way of results from Johannesburg. Secondly, development is proceeding slowly because, as I see it, we have models for both education and economics that are unduly top-down and reductionist. We have chosen to organise our society by focusing on specialisation. There are more than 20 000 different disciplines in our universities, and specialisation is, of course, good for solving a variety of individual problems. There are, however, extremely few experts engaged in the solution of cross-border problems. The Johannesburg Summit is now to try to solve all these problems. Alongside the short-term measures, we must, then, also reflect upon the big picture and ensure that we learn to think better in terms of systems in our societies. In particular, we must help the poor, or developing, countries to develop research skills so that they are themselves able to develop strategies that are both more profitable financially speaking and more sustainable in environmental terms.

Political group: PPE-DE