Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to talk about noise generated by car tyres. Noise is an environmental and health problem which is underestimated. Tyres cause a nuisance to one third of the citizens in Europe who complain about it, compared to one quarter of the citizens ten years ago. The problem of noise is therefore escalating, especially road and aircraft noise. At first reading, the European Parliament was wrong not to react to the feeble proposals from the European Commission. For example, the European Commission’s proposal did not contain a review clause. All environmental proposals made by the European Commission contain a review clause, but not this one. This is hardly surprising given the fact that this proposal was drafted by the DG for Industry. In the Council, this environmental matter was wrongly dealt with by the Ministers for Economic Affairs and the Internal Market. It should have been dealt with in the Council of Ministers for the Environment. The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection has tabled 4 amendments with 32 votes against 10 votes. With regard to ordinary passenger cars, we suggest that the limit is reduced by 2 decibels. The German independent inspection body, TÜV, has tested numerous existing car tyres. They all meet the ineffective noise limits proposed by the Council. A reduction of 2 decibels is technically possible without jeopardising safety. This has also been confirmed by experts of the Swedish institute for roads and traffic. With regard to vans and lorries, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection also suggests reducing the noise level by 2 decibels. Vans and lorries produce more noise than ordinary cars. This is why it is important to make the necessary changes here too, and I hope that a number of the Christian-Democrat MEPs will be able to vote in favour of this. The tyre industry has been given until October 2005 to meet stricter noise limits. This seems ample time to me. More is required, of course, in order to reduce the noise from road traffic. The noise level from ‘fluisterasfalt’ [silent asphalt], as it is termed by our Flemish friends, or ‘ZOAB, zeer open asfaltbeton’ [very open asphalt concrete], as we like to refer to it in the Netherlands, is probably 20 decibels lower than that from cobblestone roads. Our motorways are no longer paved with cobblestones, but a reduction of 3 to 5 decibels is possible by introducing this type of asphalt everywhere. We will be returning to the problems of noise when we deal with the directive on noise. Silent asphalt and a change of tyre could help reduce the noise level by 6 decibels, which may not seem a great deal, but one should remember that decibels are a logarithmic table. This means that the noise level can be cut by more than half without reducing the volume of traffic. Cars inherently cause a large number of environmental problems. More than 10 years ago, the European Parliament introduced the first generation of catalytic converters and, two years ago, the second generation of catalytic converters appeared in the Langen/Hautala report on the motor oil programme. As a result, air pollution caused by cars and lorries will drop by 70% to 90% in 2005 and 2007. Similarly, we found a sound solution to the recycling of end-of-life vehicles in the Florenz report. There are now two major environmental issues left to tackle at European level. The first one is noise, which I have dealt with extensively, and the second one is the CO2 or the greenhouse problem. With regard to CO2, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection has suggested that the European Commission submit a legislative proposal to reduce the rolling resistance of tyres by 5%. This means that 5% less fuel will be used and that the emission of CO2 will also fall by the same amount. I would welcome a positive reaction from the European Commission.

Political group: Verts-ALE