Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as Mrs Breyer has just indicated, we are dealing today with the second individual directive deriving from the framework Directive of 1996 on the assessment and management of ambient air quality. The main aim of the proposed legislation is to establish limit values for atmospheric concentrations of benzene and carbon monoxide in order to improve the quality of our air and to avoid, prevent and reduce the adverse effects of these substances on human health and the environment. It is true that the main source of emissions of both pollutants is road traffic. Other major sources of benzene emissions are fuel distribution, oil refineries and the chemical industry, while all combustion processes emit carbon monoxide. This directive is a very important contribution to the maintenance of clean air and to the global climate strategy. The proposal was presented by the European Commission in December 1998. The Finnish presidency made a determined effort to use the new legal scope offered by the Treaty of Amsterdam in order to have this proposed directive enter into force back in December 1999 after the first reading, with the amendments adopted by the European Parliament. Our Group would have warmly welcomed that. I need hardly say that our Group supported the amendments which emphasise the danger to certain sections of the population and which regard the proposed environmental measures as surpassable minimum standards. The provisions on a single extension of the deadline and on compliance with the limit values that are required for climatic reasons in our southern Member States, provisions which are now contained in the common position, were introduced by ourselves at the time of the first reading, as was the maximum benzene concentration of 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Mrs Breyer, of course, has already given some indication of the subsequent harmonious development of the common position. This now contains the very wording that we wanted on this point, and its other provisions are consistent and provide for practicable measures to improve air quality in Europe. Our Group accepts this common position and can support it as it stands. This new regime guarantees that public health will be afforded a high level of protection, and it is flexible enough to be adapted at any time in response to technological progress. Mrs Breyer has taken a great deal of trouble and has achieved much of what Parliament wanted at the negotiating table. I must say, however, that in our view the amendments which have been reintroduced are superfluous; while they are justifiable, it is not worth putting the directive on ice again for the sake of these amendments, which would only delay the adoption process. We consider it far more important – as you yourself said, Mrs Breyer – that, after a delay of half a year, this instrument should now enter into force as quickly as possible, so that it can play its part in improving the quality of the air we breathe in Europe. For that reason, our Group does not support the amendments, because we hope that, by withholding our support, we can expedite the process of adopting this directive.

Political group: PPE-DE