Mr President, I apologise for my lateness. Human rights seem to have been taking up quite a lot of time, and quite right too. I want to express Parliament’s concern that the Kyoto Protocol may falter and fail, leaving the world without any coherent network of obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We in the European Parliament offer our full support to the Commission and to the presidency in their endeavours to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol survives and comes into force. We would like to use this brief debate to explore what Europe can do to lead the world in the absence of American leadership and in what ways the Members of the European Parliament who attend the Bonn Conference can speak for the people of Europe and actively participate in the proceedings. We very much appreciate the work of the Dutch Minister, Mr Pronk, in seeking to find a way to solve the unresolved issues left over from The Hague, and we would appreciate it if the Commission could give us its view on how successful he has been to date and whether or not the work he has done has now cleared the way forward. But the big question for us is whether it will be possible to show that the European Union, and the other major parties to the Protocol, are prepared to take decisions without the United States. Here the attitude of the new Japanese government is crucial. Without the votes of Japan and Canada the Protocol cannot enter into force. We gather that the omens are not good and that Japan probably, and Canada certainly, lack the political will to go ahead without the United States. If Japan is prepared to go ahead, then there is the suspicion that the Japanese may want to re-write the crucial proposals within the protocol, notably using the year 2000 perhaps rather than 1990 as the base year for calculating greenhouse gas emission reductions. One of my colleagues, Mr Moreira Da Silva, who will be leading Parliament’s delegation to Bonn, wishes to move an oral amendment on this point to the resolution we have tabled, since the problem with Japan has really only come to the fore in the period since we tabled it. Our resolution reiterates in paragraph 3 our basic expectations about the action that will follow ratification of the protocol. But as Europeans we must make a sober assessment of what this will mean for us if it were to happen and still more if it were to happen without the United States. First and most crucially: money. As the protocol stands, financial contributions from individual parties will be based on each party’s share of CO2 emissions. It is not difficult to see that the United States, with 39% of the total 1990 emissions, would pay the lion’s share. The question that occurs to me, which should perhaps have been asked earlier, is how the Clinton government ever thought it could persuade Congress to sign up to the Treaty. Perhaps greater honesty at the outset might have helped provide a more realistic atmosphere. Without the United States the burden will fall on Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia. The finance available for measures to reduce CO2 emissions in poorer countries will be greatly reduced without US participation. The strain on the Europeans will be greater. Are we prepared for this, I ask? Secondly, if we ratify Kyoto alone or without the United States it will mean taking certain actions that are going to be painful. We MEPs who follow these issues recognise that. Every year, every month, far into the night, we deal with directives designed to reduce emissions, but we also know that in most instances when we encounter the Council or their representatives it is extremely difficult to get the Member States to agree to these proposals in their original, very demanding form. We now face a situation where, according to the European Environment Agency, only the United Kingdom, Germany and Luxembourg reduced their greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 1998. All the other countries of Europe increased them. So how will Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Finland, Italy and, to a lesser extent, Sweden and France, meet the Kyoto targets? Or will we, as the United States suspects, not be willing to take the actions that will give reality to our ambitions? We hope that the Bonn Conference and the Belgian presidency will be able to move the Europeans on from words to action. Finally a word on the participation of the EU delegation in the Bonn conference. We are tired of being a Greek chorus in this tragedy. We are tired of coming on to stage when the main action has taken place to lament or celebrate what has happened and to offer philosophical reflections on the sad state of mankind – 'Οίμοι η τάλαινα' indeed! This is unsatisfactory because we should ourselves be reckoned as protagonists since we will have to adopt the legislation that will flow from Kyoto and we will have to explain it to the people of Europe. We may not want to be negotiators ourselves, but our ambition is to play a full part in the meetings with the European Union delegation that decides how Europe will act. We are not content to remain as a chorus. IN THE CHAIR: MR PUERTAVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE